Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Community – Defibrillator

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

“It’s not clear who thought up the defibrillator”On today’s episode, we’re talking about community. We’ll play one of Stuart’s opening scripts, about an inspiring community project that we learned about on our travels with the Vinyl Cafe: The Smiths Falls Station Theatre. Plus, a Dave and Morley story about a more unusual type of community venture.Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the apostrophe podcast network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We're talking about community on the pod today. I've got one of Stewart's opening scripts for you about an inspiring community project that we learned about on our travels with the Vinyl Cafe. And in the second half of the show, we've got a Dave and Morley story for you. But we're going to start with this. This is Stuart McLean.

From the train station theater in Smith Falls, Ontario, it's the vinyl cafe with Stuart McLean. Thank you. It's so nice to be here. Especially nice to be here at the Smith Falls Station Theater. More than 10 years in the making, but I would put forward well worth all of that, well worth a decade of work.

This theater, housed in this 125-year-old railway station is the reason that we're here in Smith's Falls today, the reason we chose to come to your town. And I thought I should take a few minutes to tell the people listening at home why I am so moved by what you've done with this old building. To do that, I should go back to where every good story starts.

To do that, I should go back to the beginning. Smith's Falls is a real. railway town. It was born on the river, but it grew up on the railway. In the 1850s, railway companies began to build lines to connect Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, and Montreal. And Smith Falls was smack in the middle between Kingston and Ottawa, and conveniently situated on the Rideau Canal. By the turn of the 20th century, two major rail companies had built their stations in town, the Canadian Pacific, and the Canadian Northern. During World War II, this was one of the many stations where troop trains stopped to pick up soldiers. The rooms upstairs on the second floor,

which now hold the stage lights, were once full of beds, so men from out of town could sleep here while they waited for the train that would take them to war. The main passenger station, the CP station, which is a station that we're in today, was a hot spot in Smith Falls. There was a lunch counter that was jammed at night. It's where you'd stop to have lunch and where you'd take your date to get a hamburger and milkshake after dance. Lot has changed since then. Train traffic, as it has in so many places, is less frequent.

And as the trains diminished, the station did too. By the turn of this century, the Smiths Falls train station had been all but abandoned. There were a few CP offices upstairs, and there was a via-rail waiting area on the main floor, but there were also holes in the floors and pigeons and squirrels wandering around. In 1999, CP decided they didn't need the building anymore. They announced they were going to tear it down. Via rail said they would build it. a small bus shelter for passengers to use while they were waiting for the trains.

The building may have been an eyesore, but it was over 100 years old. And Dennis Staples, the mayor of Smiths Falls, said he didn't think you should tear down a heritage building. It's a building that held a century of history. So many people in Smith's Falls had relatives who worked for CP. The town had grown up around the station, the people had grown up, in the station and with the station, and they had strong feelings about its fate. So instead of tearing the building down, Mayor Staples arranged for the town to buy it, for a dollar. And then he put out a call. If anyone had an idea of how the old station

should be used, they should present their idea to city council. There was a community theater group just starting up. It was their idea to turn. and the station into a performance venue. Council thought that was a good idea. They approved it. The theater group was small, about a dozen people, nurses and engineers, lab techs, and teachers. The first thing they decided was they didn't want the success of the theater

to be burdened with debt. They decided they would fundraise bit by bit until they had enough money to renovate one area of the building. Then they would stop the renovation and fundraise again until they could move on to the next stage. They worked hard for 10 years. The renovation cost about three quarters of a million dollars. They never took out a loan.

They never went into debt. CP donated money towards making the building structurally sound. via put money towards the passenger waiting room. The National Art Center in Ottawa donated some of their old seats. The theater group wrote grant applications. Some of them were successful. Local electricians donated their services to wire the building. Friends and family members built the green room behind the stage.

Sound and lights were donated by local companies and by business people who were from Smith Falls but had moved to. the city, and Via put money towards the passenger waiting room, which is connected to the theater lobby. In fact, the theater and the train station share the same washrooms, which means that the Smith Falls train station is the only station in the country with two-ply paper. As the work continued, the community started to take ownership of the project, people, even people who thought the theater would not or should not happen, started to climb aboard. He'll be down at the station waiting for a train and they'd poked their head in to see what was happening in the theater and Pat Smith or

Wayne Henwood would most likely be there and they'd always take the time to show them around. The renovation sort of fell into Pat's hands. If you ask him what happened, he'll tell you that someone asked him to go to a meeting one day and the next thing he knew he was a project manager and treasurer. Pat was at the theater pretty much every single day during the 10-year renovation. There isn't a light switch or a floorboard that was installed without his supervision. When the theater was finally completed, the auditorium was named after Pat. Nancy Yonker, a nurse, told us pretty much the same thing happened to her. One day she was working as a nurse. The next, she was running fundraisers and

giving presentations about how to write a grant application. There were people in town who cringed when they saw me coming, Nancy said. But they were always generous. Everybody did what they could, and that's what makes this feel like Smith's Falls Theater. Feels like the town really owns it. Pat and Nancy both told me the same thing. They said working on the theater was a unifying experience. I'm proud, Nancy told me, that our core group has been together for the past 10 years.

We've always stayed positive, even through the tough times, and we are all good friends now. And that is why we're here today. Not, and I should be clear, because the Smith Falls Station Theater is so different, but because this theater is an example of what can be done, can be done and what is being done all across the country. People working hard to create something of value in their community. People donating their time and their money and their skills toward the greater good. People standing up in town councils and church basements and, yes, old railway stations,

saying, this is important. We can do this. we should do this. People who are not afraid of the time and the effort that it takes to make change. Today on the vinyl cafe, we want to say thank you. To the Smith Falls Community Theater, but also to all the other groups who are doing the same thing. Thank you for caring. but thank you for more than your care. Thank you for your actions. When actions is led by thoughtfulness

and driven with passion, great things get done. That was Stuart McLean recorded at the fabulous station theater in Smith Falls, Ontario in 2011. We loved our visit to the station theater. I haven't been out that way in a while, and I trust the theater

is still going strong. Is there anyone listening today from Smith Falls? If you are, will you send us an email and let us know or find us on Facebook and write us on Messenger? We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with the Dave and Morley story. So stick around. Welcome back. Story time now. This is a story about a very different kind of project that was undertaken by Dave's community, his friends and neighbors. This is Stuart McLean with defibrillator. So, summer came and summer went. Sashayed through town like a girl in a cotton dress. Langwood, long of leg, and just saucy enough to turn more than one head. Slow enough, too,

so everyone who turned caught at least one more glimpse before she disappeared. But September turned to October, and the nights turned chilly, and the leaves began to turn, and pretty soon all it was left of summer was summer memories. It was a summer that Kenny Wong's restaurant, Wong's Scottish meat pies. I've always liked that one, too. Took a bad turn. Oh, the regular still came, but the new burrito placed in. down the street and the vegan cafe around the block were siphoning off some of the lunchtime traffic. Kenny had to lay off a chef and return to the kitchen himself for the first time in years.

It was the summer that Dave's neighborhood nemesis, Mary Turlington, had her infamous meltdown at the Bistro Wemette. It's not clear what transpired in that little cafe. Mary was, safe to assume, wound up as tight as a seven-day clock. The conflagration, which is what the local paper called it, the conflagration had something to do with a please wait to be seated sign. And the fact that a lot of waiting, but not a lot of seating, was going on. But what exactly happened? No one knows for sure. There was a dust up, and that much is certain. And the restaurant hostess did go on sick leave. And Mary did end up at the family doctor. It was the doctor who delivered the ultimatum, either psychotherapy or meditation.

Choose one. You have to chill out, were his exact words. You have to be kidding, said Mary. Surely there's a chemical option? If this was Vancouver, there'd be a chemical option. Doctor didn't bat an eye. There is lock up, he said. Okay, okay, I'll meditate, said Mary.

But I will not chant or go to an ass ram. Ash, said the doctor. Ashram. He gave her the name of a private meditation teacher, and she had her first class Labor Day weekend. She had to sit for half hour a day, doing nothing. She found it insufferable, but she persevered. Finally, and surely most unsettlingly,

it was a summer that Jim Schofield had his heart attack. The episode, said Jim. It was an episode, except it was more than an episode. Jim went to the emergency room and three in the morning with all the classic symptoms. Indigestion. A pain that started in his chest and radiated down his arm and up into his jaw and a general sense of doom. Well, I always have a general sense of doom, said Jim. It wasn't a serious attack. I didn't lose any hard function, said Jim. But it was serious enough.

It was a warning shot, said Dave. I guess, said Jim. Anyway, summer is done and dusted. The leaves are dying, but Jim is fine. He had bypass and went through rehab, stopped smoking, started exercising, a walking program. Whatever works, said Dave. The idea of losing Jim was intolerable.

It's not clear who thought up the defibrillator. You're joking, said Jim. Well, not for you, said Dave. It's for everyone. It's for the neighborhood. This is a high-risk neighborhood. Lots of men, over 50. The idea was they'd all chip in and then store it somewhere central.

If they could get 10 families, it'd be less than $200 each. Well, in the end, there were 12 families who chipped in, so there was money left over, and they used the extra money to hire a trainer, and they organized a barbecue, and they sat around eating burgers and fries and studying CPR. You know it's true. So August came, and August went. September too. And the pretty girl in the summer dress

disappeared down the street and into the crowd. Jim was fine and Kenny was back in the kitchen and Mary, who did not enjoy the meditation business one bit not one little bit, was working away nevertheless,

laying there on her bed half hour a day, counting her breaths in and then out, smiling at her breath as it came in and smiling at it as it went out, trying to ignore all the thoughts that bounced into her mind and the infernal racket of the world around her.

And the best place for the defibrillator, the most central, accessible place in the neighborhood, turned out to be, by general consensus, everyone agreed, Dave and Morley's garage. And you don't need me to tell you that that just why. a good idea. At the start, everyone treated it, the defibrillator,

with great earnestness. But it wasn't long before it became, like, everything else in the neighborhood. A source of merriment. Trainer said they should practice. It should have drills. You need to do what he said, so you can do it without

thinking in case you ever have to do it for real. And so someone drew up a schedule, and they gathered in little groups on Saturday afternoons in Dave's garage. Dave, Carl Lobier and Bert Turlington one Saturday, hanging around the way guys do until one of them said, okay, let's do it. Dave said, I'll be victim. And he clutched his chest dramatically, moaned a little, staggered around a bit,

and then he lay himself gingerly down on the garage. garage for. Bert looked at Carl and said, you go first, I'll time you. Carl nodded, and Bert pulled out his phone. Now, for

all intents and purposes, the thing was foolproof. When you attach it to someone, the first thing it does is evaluate their heart rhythm. Has to recognize a life threatening rhythm before it recommends administering a shock. Let me

you how it works here. You turn it on and it gives you step-by-step voice instructions. Remove the patient shirt. Pull a sticker off the first pad. All you do is follow the instructions. So even if Carl had stuck the pads on Dave's chest, it wouldn't have given him a shock if he was in a healthy rhythm. And for times like this, when they were just practicing, there was safety mode. Go, said Bird. Well, Carl ran across the garage and he popped a little lunchbox-sized machine out of the bracket on the wall, and he ran back and he knelt down beside Dave, and he flipped it open, and he pressed the on button. Initiating device, said the machine.

Remove the patient shirt. They all knew this was just a scenario. They all knew the machine was in safety mode. and that Dave lying there on the floor with his eyes closed had not had a heart attack. But they also knew that Carl was kneeling beside a machine that was capable of delivering 200 joules of electricity. So even though they were acting all casual, as the scenario progressed a certain seriousness settled on him. Carl unbuttoned Dave's shirt. okay said Carl if this was real I'd rip it open

machine said remove the sticker from the first pad Carl said okay I'm removing the sticker he wasn't really removing the sticker he was just pretending because those pads are expensive the machine said place the sticker on the patient's chest just below the left armpit and so it went for the first pad and the first pad and the second pad and the testing of the heart rate.

And Carl's face is all screwed up in concentration now. Carl is biting on his tongue. One minute, said Bert. One minute 30. And then the machine said, prepare to shock the patient. Bert said, make sure you're not touching them anywhere. Because if you are touching the patient,

you were going to get shocked too. Carl said, clear, and the machine said, shock the patient. Well, Dave clenched his fists, and he scrunched up his eyes just in case. And Carl held his breath, because these things can start to feel real. These things can get intense. Here goes, says Carl. And he pressed the red shock button. And that's when Bert, who was standing right behind Carl, leaned over so the paper

bag he had blown up was no more than six inches from Carl's ears. Here go, said Carl. And then Bert pulled his hands apart and he clapped them together and there was a tremendous explosion. Carl lifted right off the ground. It was like Carl was the one who'd been shocked. Dave and Bert whooped. Dave and Bert staggered around the garage half hysterical, pounding each other on the back,

clutching onto the side of the car. Took ten minutes for Carl to settle down For a good ten minutes Carl was all Fluttery and crazy Standing up and sitting down Calling the two of them Unspeakable things I can't believe you did that

I could have had a heart attack Bert said well we got the defibrillator for that When Ted Anderson walked up the driveway And Carl got all earnest all of a sudden said, hey, Ted, I just finished. It's your turn. Let me time you. And there was Bert, hiding behind the car,

inflating a new paper bag. And so went the autumn, bags popping and leaves bursting into orange and red. And then came the smoky afternoons, as the reds faded to yellow, the yellows to brown, and then everything to gray. Pretty soon the defibrillator in Dave's garage was just another summer memory. Not forgotten, but no longer the first thing you thought about on a Saturday morning.

No longer a preoccupation. Except for Dave, of course. I mean, come on, it was in his garage. He did walk by it morning and night. And you stare at something like that. Day in and day out, it's only natural. you're going to start obsessing about what it would be like to use in real life. Be godlike, the power to give life.

In emergency rooms, the ER doctors call it riding the lightning. It has baby pads, said Dave to his pal Kenny one day at lunch. Dave was sitting at the back counter at Kenny's cafe. He was waving his hand over a steaming, plate of dumplings. It still delivers a shock, he said, but a kid appropriate amount. Even the adult pads wouldn't kill you. If you were shocked, by accident, I mean, get your attention, knocked you around a bit, but it wouldn't kill you, would stop your heart, but your heart would start again. And those were the adult pads. What harm could the infant?

kids do. No way, said Kenny. Come on, said Dave. Take off your shirt for science. He just wanted to try them so badly. How about your dog? said Dave. There is just so much

wrong with that, said Kenny. They settled on a 12-pound roast. A rump roast. They got out of Kenny's cooler. They took it over to Dave's house. took it out to the garage, shut the garage doors, duct tape the roast to the pads, so they wouldn't have to hold on to it. And they let her rip.

And what happened was a lot of nothing. Sort of disappointing, said Dave. He was hoping it would bounce around or something. He was remembering Carl. The roast didn't even quiver. Nothing. Until the next morning. when the phone rang earlier than you would expect.

Get over here, said Kenny. Well, when he got over there, Kenny served him the tenderest piece of beef he had ever tried. Next night, they got another roast. Tried out the adult paths. They only seemed to toughen the meat up. Was it possible they had stumbled on the sweet spot on the first try? Was it beginner's luck? Said Kenny?

Well, they set off to find out. They took a big bag of roast over to Dave's garage, and they tried them on pretty much all the possible settings. They spent hours out there in the garage working on this. What are you doing out there? said Morley. Oh, nothing, said Dave. We're not doing anything.

But they were doing something. Kenny was serving twice as much beef and broccoli as he'd ever sold. The bone, white moon, of winter slipped into the sky. And the stars doubled and moved further away or seemed to. The sky deepened is what happened. And the nights were long and cold.

Until one morning, out of nowhere, someone said, I woke early for no reason. And someone else said, me too. The crows were back. Pretty soon, the robins were back too. That was April. Then came May, May, the lusty month of May. Kenny was selling so much beef, he opened a backyard patio.

Stayed open for dinner for the first time ever. Jim, who had been walking in malls since November, started walking outside again. And Mary Turlington moved her daily meditation from her bedroom to the back garden. And the sorry problem with that is that when you're standing on Dave's back porch, you can see clearly over the back fence into the Turlington's yard. And the problem with that is what you'd see is Mary, splayed out on the ground. Ominously still. We're getting to the part of the story you've been waiting for right here.

And you can understand that it might be easy to jump to the wrong conclusion, especially if there happens to be a defibrillator in your garage. Cheer up. Hello? Call Dave, little tentatively. Because when disaster comes calling, no matter how prepared you might be, no matter how much you think you are courting it, disaster is never a welcome thing.

Hey, call Dave again, he's walking toward the fifth. fence now thinking to himself, Mary must be asleep. But no matter how many times he called, Mary didn't wake up, Mary didn't move. So now we have Dave running for his garage. We're going to take a little break here for a moment and consider all this from Mary's point of view. Mary had been working hard at her meditation all winter. Just the week before, teacher had told her she was doing very well. Didn't feel like that to marry. Okay, once or twice she had lost track of things

and entered some joyful state of... Well, she wouldn't have used the word out loud. Not to you or not to me either, but to herself and to teacher, it was the only word she could come up with that described it. A state of bliss, she said. Of course, as soon as she had noticed it, as soon as she'd become aware of it, it went away. Popped just like a soap bubble.

She had tried to get it back, but she couldn't. Teacher said, do not try. Teacher said, to hold on, we must let go. Just breathe. Just breathe in and breathe out. Just notice each breath. Just notice what is. I notice everything, said Mary.

That's the problem. It is the problem, said teacher. But it's also the solution. Just notice and let go. Notice and let go. And that is when Mary heard the latch of her garden door open and closed. The latch on the door opened and closed. and she thought Bert must be home early.

He said he would. Last fall, she would have opened her eyes and said something. Sat up, maybe snapped at Bert. But she had progressed. She noticed the gate, and she let the gate go. Breathe in and breathe out. Mary? Mary didn't move.

Not a muscle. Teacher had warned her there would be a moment like this. Every moment is a learning moment, said teacher. Breathe in and breathe out. Mary! She was not going to succumb. Now there is no doubt a long list of things that even the most experienced meditator

might find difficult to notice and let go. And one of the things at the top of that list would surely be your neighbor's hand landing on the top button of your blouse and ripping. Mary opened her eyes. Mary said, what is going on? Well, Dave had his back to her. He was fiddling with the machine.

Just relax, said, Dave, I'm here to help. And he whirled around and he slapped the first pad into place. Mary said, I don't think so. And she began to get up. And the thing is, those wires are not designed to be jostled like that. And if they are, that defibrillator is going to pick up an erratic signal and the little voice will say, shock the patient.

Mary's husband, Bert, came home about ten minutes later. And when he didn't find Mary inside, he went out into the backyard, where he found his wife and his neighbor lying next to each other on the grass with his hair and her clothes in disarray. His wife was moaning,

and there was the smell of something burning. as if one of them had just smoked a cigarette. She never meditated again. Oh, she tried. But her eyes popped open with every sound, every voice, every footstep, every distraction was just too distracting because everything she heard was him coming her way.

So she went back to her doctor, and he said, okay, okay, and he referred her to a psychiatrist who put her on meds within five minutes. And there was a neighborhood meeting. And everyone there agreed to be best if they moved the defibrillator from Dave's garage. For Mary's sake, said Carl, Bert says she's having terrible nightmares. June turned to July and July to August.

And Kenny's beef sales went back to normal. Not right away, but slowly over the summer. And August turned to September. And as the nights cooled, so did the memories. Now, what seemed unforgettable just seemed memorable. And what seemed horrifying, just seemed funny. Mary hasn't talked to Dave, mind you. Not yet.

I'll never talk to him again, she said. But she said that before. and everything always seems better with the passage of time. And the passage of time is the one sure thing we can all count on. That was the story we call defibrillator. It was recorded in Barry, Ontario in 2014. All right, that's it for today. But we'll be back here next week with another Dave and Morley story.

And then one night, there were shooting stars. It was a night Sam and Murphy will never forget. They were in the backyard lying on the soft grass. The sky couldn't have been black or the stars couldn't have been closer or further away. It was hard to tell. Close and far at the same time. A constellation of confusion. They'd been lying there for maybe half an hour, lying on their backs head to head, lost from the world of word.

when Murphy's head, did you see that? Like a flash from a camera, except longer and streakier. From one side of the sky, right across to the other. The two of them sat up abruptly and stared at each other in wonder. It was there, and then it was gone.

And whatever it was had flared into the atmosphere of their imaginations like a galloping horse. A wave of a hand, a blink of the eye, and they would have missed it, but neither of them blinked. Oh, yes. Sam had seen it all right. What was that? said Sam. Murphy's eyes were bulging. But he didn't say anything. It was like he was in a trance. Murphy? said Sam.

Aliens. It was aliens. And then there was another. And then another. And then another. and Murphy said, it's happened. The boys ran inside. Inside, it was an August night like any other. Margaret was sitting on the couch knitting, and Smith was sitting beside her in his big green chair.

The television was on. They were watching the news, oblivious, that the biggest news of all was just outside. We saw a UFO, said Sam. Three, said Murphy. They were hardly the first boys from the city to stare up into the night. and be fooled by a shooting star.

Ah, said Smith, smiling, sitting up. Margaret knew what was coming. These were the sort of moments Smith loved. He was about to explain. He was about to say something about comets and meteors and cosmic hoo-ha. Ah, said Smith. But he didn't get any further than that because Margaret didn't let him. Before he said one more word, Margaret shot him a look.

What? said Smith. And Margaret shot him another look, and then she turned to the boys, and she said, tell us what you saw. Right across the sky, said Murphy, right over town. Three of them, said Sam. One after the other. Like a flash from a camera, said Margaret. Except faster and streakier.

Exactly, said both boys together. How did you know, said Sam. What else said Margaret? You're not the first ones around here to see something like that. And then she glanced at Smith. Smith was frowning at her. Margaret frowned back. That's next week on the podcast.

I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the apostrophe podcast network. The recording engineer is the tenderest piece of meat. Greg DeCloot. The music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.