Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Remembrance – Zaidie’s story

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

“I will never forget that day.”We have something very special for you this week. From one of the most-requested Vinyl Cafe episodes, this is Stuart’s re-telling of the life story of holocaust survivor (and my husband’s Zaidie) David Kilberg.This episode features music by the Manitoba band Finjan, from the album “Dancing on Water”.  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 have something very special for you today. One of the most requested Vinyl Cafe episodes. A story Stuart wrote around this time back in 2012. It's a story about someone I love. someone who looms large in my life. It's about my husband's grandfather, his Zadie. Before I play this for you, I want to give a very special shout out to the Manitoba band Finjin. Finjin graciously gave us permission to include their music on today's podcast. The wonderful songs that you'll hear today are from Finjin's album called Dancing on Water.

Thank you, Finjin. This is a story about my husband's family, and it started when Josh's grandmother, his Bubby, died. As is the custom in the Jewish tradition, Bubby was buried almost immediately, within 24 hours. After the service, our family gathered to sit shiva. Shiva is the traditional week of mourning in the Jewish religion. During shiva, we gather inside the family home. We cover the mirrors with cloth, say prayers at sunrise and sundown,

and refrain from cooking. Friends and neighbors drop by during the week of Shiva to pay their respects, and when they do, they're expected to bring food. Stuart brought supper on the sixth night, and that's where we're going to start this story. This is Stuart McLean with Zadie's story. I brought supper on the sixth night. I arrived around five. Josh's newly widowed grandfather met me at the door. Mr. Kilburg, I said.

My name's Stuart McLean. I'm a friend of Joshua's. I have come to pay my respects on the passing of your wife. Come in, he said. Come in. I handed the dinner I had brought to Josh's mother. I followed Josh's grandfather into the living room. He motioned to a chair by the window. I sat down.

He sat beside me and called for drinks. Would you like a schnapps, he asked. I know schnapps as a liqueur, but in German, schnapps means any strong alcoholic beverage. When Josh's grandfather asked for schnapps, he meant vodka, his favorite drink. So, vodkas in hand, we toasted his late wife. Then I said, Mr. Kilburg, I feel as if I've met you before. Ah, said Josh's grandfather, waving his hand in the air.

Everyone feels that. It's because I look like Henry Kissinger. And he did. He looked exactly like Henry Kissinger, right down to the black frame glasses, though I should add a sort of elfin version of the crafty old diplomat. Having established that, having established that we had never met, we went about the business of meeting. We sat in the living room and waited for supper, and while we waited, we talked. He told me about his late wife, Jenny, and their life together. And then he told me about his life, about growing up in Poland at the beginning of the last century, and about the days before, during, and after the

last world war. He told me about the day in 1939 when the Nazis marched into his hometown and about the years he spent in Nazi labor camps and about death marches and concentration camps. Stories of hope and stories of despair. Stories of amazing good fortune and bad. Stories of courage and stories of fear. At the end of the night after dinner, after dubbing the evening prayers, when it was time for our visit to end and for me to say goodbye, I didn't want to. I would like to talk more, I said. Maybe, I said, motioning around the room, when this has saddled, maybe I could come to your house.

I wanted to hear more of his stories. I would like that, he said. And so I did. For two days this spring, I visited with my friend Josh's grandfather. We sat in the living room of his house in the tiny town of Listowel, Ontario, and at his dining room table, and he told me the story of his life. Today on The Vinyl Cafe, in this week when we Canadians gather in remembrance, I would like to tell his story to you.

Today on The Vinyl Cafe, The Life of David Kilburg. Before we begin that, some music. This is Finjin. We're going to let Finjin provide the soundtrack to the show. This is the title track off their album, Dancing on Water. Thank you. I'm Stuart McLean and this is The Vinyl Cafe and today on the show I'm going to tell you the story of my friend Josh's grandfather, his Zadie, David Kilburg. Zadie is the Yiddish name for grandfather and Zadie is what Josh and everyone in his family calls him.

And although David Kilburg is not my Zadie, it is the only name I have heard him called. And the name suits him so well, I asked him if I could call him that too. He laughed when I asked. Why not, he said. Everybody else does. So this is Zadie's story. So, this is Zadie's story. Zadie was born in 1922 in the small Polish town of Zawiercza. It's hard to comprehend today just how far away that time and place is from the world we live in now. But consider this. There was no electricity in Zawiercho when Zadie was a boy.

The stove in his mother's kitchen burned wood. There were no house lights, nor street lights for that matter. As a boy, Zadie walked to school along cobblestone streets. And when he walked in the winter darkness, he carried a candle in a glass lantern for comfort, his pocket full of wooden matches. He grew up in a world that we have left behind, a world of candles and horse-drawn carts, days of clip-clopping carriages, and nights that glowed and flickered to the smoky dance of kerosene lamps. His father, Isaac Moshe, was a butcher. There was a stable behind his butcher shop where animals waiting to be slaughtered were kept. There were other kosher butchers in town,

but Isaac Moshe was the president of the Butcher's Association, and the rabbi wouldn't eat meat unless it came from Isaac's butcher shop. The other butchers used to call Zadie the little president. Zadie grew up in a world that tipped more to the past than to the present, a world of butchers and tailors, shoemakers and blacksmiths. Until Friday, the 1st of September, 1939, when the world suddenly changed and the waves of history swept over Zadie's medieval life, had their way with him, and then spat him out on the shores of Canada. September 1, 1939 was the day the German army invaded Poland and the Second World War began.

was the day the German army invaded Poland and the Second World War began. The day that, as Auden wrote, marked the end of a low and dishonest decade. The day all the clever hopes expired. I will never forget that day, said Zadie. He's sitting beside me in his living room. He's staring across the room at a collection of family photos. I was 16 years old, he said. Old enough to know what was going on.

Oh, I knew what was going on, he said. Families who had fled Germany in the face of the Nazis, or perhaps had been thrown out, had come to Zavircha. I went to school with some of those kids, said Zady. I knew what was heading our way. I knew that trouble was brewing. When news of the invasion arrived on that Friday, nearly the entire town of Zavircha emptied. Zady and his mother and his father, the butcher, and his sister and his little brother left at sundown and walked away from the German border to a nearby town.

Like everyone, they were trying to get away from the invading army. A foolish thing to do, it turned out. People were shot, and soon enough, the town they had gone to was overrun anyway. Soon enough, Zadie's family had given up on the idea they could run away from history, and so they returned home. Zadie lived in Zaviercza for a year under German occupation. He remembers it as a hard time. He remembers that from the beginning, everything changed. School was closed, and his father, who had always seemed strong and resourceful, seemed broken. He was frightened stiff, said Zadie. He was no longer permitted to kill animals in the Jewish way. Kosher butchering had to be done in secret.

But my father was too frightened to do this, said Zadie. So I had to help. Zadie was 16. He remembers putting geese into a bag and taking them on his bike, peddling down the back streets of Zavircha under the noses of the Germans with the geese slung over his handlebars. He took them to a stable where they would be slaughtered. He remembers how his father owned a share of a cow.

He remembers biking to a barn in a nearby village the night the cow was going to be slaughtered. He went because his father was too frightened to go. I remember that night, said Zadie, but much of it I don't remember. Though he remembers the November night a year later, Though he remembers the November night a year later When all the Jewish boys between 17 and 21 Were told to report to the school Zadie was 17 I didn't want to go, said Zadie

I knew this was not going to be good I thought, maybe I should go to Russia Some of his friends did that, left in the night for Russia. He didn't. The Germans had lists. I knew if I didn't show up at the school, they would take my father. So he reported to the school, where he was kept overnight. And then the next morning he was taken to the train station where a train was waiting.

No one knew what was happening. No one would say where they were being taken. Parents came to the station crying. We knew nothing, said Sadie We saw our parents Then we heard shots And then we left The train took them to Germany To a set of wood barracks in the town of Auenrode

The barracks were surrounded by guards. It was a forced labor camp. Their first job would be to work on the autobahn. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 That first winter, the first winter Zadie was in the labor camp in Auenroda, the winter of 1940-41, was a harsh winter across Europe. There was a lot of snow. Zadie remembers being taken from his bunk at night and given a shovel so he could shovel the autobahn clear.

In the spring and the summer, he worked on shovel the autobahn clear. In the spring and the summer, he worked on the sand and gravel roadbed. Like everyone, he was given one meal a day, a bowl of watery soup. Sadie said, you seldom found anything in your soup except liquid. Then he shrugged, maybe a piece of potato if you were lucky. They were fed at night. At first he would return to the barracks and line up with everyone for his bowl of soup. And then after he'd eaten, he would fall exhausted into his bed.

I was not even washing, he said. I was too tired to wash. He came to an important decision. I realized if I did not look after myself, I would soon lose my self-respect. I realized if I lost my self-respect, I wouldn't survive. And so he changed his routine. I would come home from work,

and instead of lining up for soup, I'd go to the washroom and take off my shirt and wash. And then I'd go for my soup. Zadie figured by waiting for the end of the soup line, he improved his chances of getting a piece of potato from the bottom of the soup pot. from the bottom of the soup pot. The potato was important, but just as important was the washing.

Zadie stared at me intently. It meant, he said, that I still had my self-respect. I saw what happened when men lost respect for themselves. We sat in silence for a moment, and then Zadie said, I had many friends who touched the fence. Running into the electric fence that surrounded the camp Was a way to commit suicide And running into the fence was not an uncommon thing Those men, said Zadie Felt like they had nothing to live for

It's not that I had more than they did But I did have the spark of hope I never lost hope I had more than they did. But I did have the spark of hope. I never lost hope. I always believed that I would survive. Hope was important, but it wasn't the only thing. Another secret of survival, said Zadie, was to surround yourself with friends who felt the same. Sympathetic friends were important for more than morale.

Yes, said Zadie, your friends would protect you. As well as their one bowl of soup, the prisoners received a daily serving of bread. One slice. There was disagreement about when to eat it. Some argued in favor of eating it right away at night with the soup. So you experienced one small moment each day without hunger. Others saved it for lunch. I would keep mine for lunch, said Zadie. I would sleep with it. If I was surrounded by my friends, I knew it was safe. I knew that no one would take it while I

slept. Zadie doesn't know how long he stayed in Al-rode I never knew the day or the week, he said I never knew the month or the year You lose track of all of that At some point, he was moved And then moved again to a third camp in Bronda Well, it was not an extermination camp like Auschwitz or Belzec or Treblinka, or as infamous as Buchenwald or Bergen-Belsen. The conditions in Branda were just as bleak.

The food was as poor, the daily bowl of thin soup, the sleeping conditions as intolerable, men squeezed together into single bunks and pestered by vermin. And the work conditions, brutal as to be unbearable. Even the strongest of men were pushed to despair. The camps were full of rumors. There would be an appell, and the prisoners would be lined up and told there was going to be a transfer to another camp. And there was the question. Was it a trip to better conditions or worse?

Should one try to avoid the transfer or get on it? Zadie had to face moments like this over and over and over again. Eventually, Zadie was moved to his fourth camp, a brickyard in Gross Pogel. He worked in the kilns where clay tiles were being fired. He stole potatoes from the kitchen and baked them in the coals while he worked. I never called it stealing, he said smiling. I called it organizing.

It was crucial to organize extra food if you were going to survive. Sometimes Zadie would engineer trades with the German guards. He'd make a deal to deliver a pack of cigarettes for three loaves of bread. He'd get the bread in advance and use one of the loaves to buy the pack of cigarettes, ending up with two loaves for himself. He would scrounge a piece of coal from a worksite and sell it to the camp elders. For the coal, he might receive an extra bowl of soup. In February of 1945, Zadie had been in the camps for five years. He was 22 years old. He was now in his fifth camp, in the town of Kittlitz-Threben.

The war would soon be over. The Russian front was moving inexorably westward into Germany. But the day before the Russians marched into the camp to liberate it, the prisoners were woken in the middle of the night. They were surrounded by guards and run out the gates. And they were kept running for a day, a day so hard many of the prisoners died. The next morning, those still alive were kept moving. They were on the move for two months,

marching through Germany, staying on the outskirts of the large cities, sleeping in barns. They didn't wash or change their clothing, and they had little to eat. We had nothing hot for eight weeks, said Zadie. Nothing. It was a death march.

If a prisoner collapsed on the road, as many of Zadie's friends did, the column would keep marching. A guard would stay behind. There would be a rifle shot. They marched, as I said, for eight weeks. Finally, they arrived at Buchenwald, a camp where tens of thousands of gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses had been put to death. Of the thousand or so prisoners who left Kittlitz-Threben, only a handful were alive. Zadie was at the end of his strength. Zadie had made it to the end of the death march, but he had been marched to hell. Buchenwald was bursting.

While thousands were being marched in, thousands more were being marched out, and to who knows where. Zadie made a decision. He decided to do everything possible not to go any further. He had no strength left. He knew if he was forced to leave, he would be one of the ones left lying by the road. Every time there was an appell to gather

prisoners, he and a friend would lie down and hide in the lice-infested piles of dead bodies that were stacked around the camp. In a sense, this was the end of his struggle to survive. He was alive, but he was pretending to be dead. And he was literally lying in a stack of dead bodies. The strategy worked, but only for a few days. Zadie and his friend weren't the only ones doing this. The guards began poking the bodies with their bayonets to expose the hidden prisoners. Zadie and his friend had to come up with a new idea. The barracks had field stone foundations. They found a loose stone in one of the buildings,

removed it, crawled through, and pulled it back in place behind them. They lay on the ground in the stunned realization that for the first time in years, they were, for the moment at least, safe. It was a huge feeling of relief, said Zadie, after months of running and walking. It didn't matter that they had no food. Zadie has no idea how long they remained hidden. A few days, anyway. At some point, the sounds they were hearing changed. One of them crawled out to see what was going on. What was going on was that the Americans had liberated the camp. had liberated the camp.

I was there, said Zadie, but I never saw anything until I saw it on television years later. He laughs when he tells me this, but there was nothing funny about the state he was in. He was 23 years old. He weighed 80 pounds. He had been diminished to one of those pictures we have all seen, skin and bones with a shaved head in a striped pajama-like uniform.

And so ends the war, and so begins the next chapter of his life, the incredible post-war years in Germany. The war was over. Zaydi was 23. He returned home to Zavircha. He returned home, hoping to find his family. When he got there, he learned that his father, the butcher, his mother, his sister, and his brother had been taken by train to Auschwitz. They were gassed on their first day. Everyone was gone. He couldn't bear staying.

Except for a broken heart, he said. I had nothing. Nothing, I asked? Your father didn't leave anything in a bank account or buried maybe gold, diamonds? I was like a newborn baby, said Zadie. I had absolutely nothing. He stayed less than a day. He went back to Germany.

He changed his name to Paul Schwartz. It sounded more German to him than David Kilburg. He got two sets of papers. One set identified him as a German, the other as a Pole. He met a girl whose family owned a department store. From them, he was able to get certain items. He smuggled these things across the border into Poland. Sewing needles, saccharin, and condoms.

On the trip back, he brought Polish bacon into Germany. He made five successful trips. On the 6th, he was almost caught. The bus he was traveling on was surrounded by Russian troops. Someone had tipped them off. The friends he was working with were captured. Zaydi escaped in the confusion. He walked off the bus right under the soldier's noses, carrying a suitcase of contraband. You might think that Zadie was lucky, but luck doesn't work that way. You cannot always be lucky. He didn't survive on luck alone. He was doing what he had to do to survive.

After that incident with the bus at the border, Zadie met three friends from the camps. The four of them pooled their resources and began to buy and sell diamonds, mostly buying them from the Germans, mostly selling them to the Russians. You can imagine in that sketchy post-war interlude, when life was still dangerous, what that must have been like. Car rides to dubious neighborhoods, rendezvous with dubious characters.

They had more than one close call, he and his friends, booting around in the shadow of the war, trading on the black market. But they were young, and they'd made it that far, and they weren't about to stumble now. And so he traveled around Germany, and back and forth between Germany and Poland, until fate took him to the town of Neustadt. until fate took him to the town of Neustadt. Where your head has to lie, said Zadie, your feet will carry you. It was in Neustadt that he met a girl who was, it seems, cut from the same bolt of cloth as he was,

the youngest of three sisters who had all survived Auschwitz. Where your head is supposed to lie, said Zadie again. The girl's name was Jenny. The three of them, the three sisters that is, were planning on leaving for Israel. They had already shipped their belongings. Don't go, he said to Jenny. Stay here with me. I've already shipped everything I own, she said. Don't worry, said Zadie. I will get you new stuff. Jenny's sisters were furious. One of them said to Zadie, Hitler couldn't break us apart. You are not going to do to us what Hitler couldn't do. But he prevailed.

Jenny stayed. Jenny and Zadie got married in September of 1947. They had a baby, a boy they named Isaac Moysha, after Zadie's Jenny, who had been in Auschwitz, could not bear the idea of her son growing up in Germany. They were at the time living in the displaced persons camp at Bergen-Belsen. People were leaving the camp for all over the world, to the USA and to Australia. Zadie and Jenny had a chance to go to Cleveland.

We didn't want to go to the States, said Zadie. We chose Canada, he said. And then he said, I'm going to make you laugh when I tell you why. When I was a boy, said Zadie, my mother used to bake challah for the Sabbath. And when she did, she always used flour that came from Canada. We had oodles of flour in Poland. But the flour from Canada was whiter. Thank you. Zadie had amassed a small bankroll from the diamond trade. Not a lot, not $10,000, but not an insignificant amount in those smoky post-war days, especially

for a man not yet 30. He took his money and used it to buy diamonds. Jenny sewed the diamonds into a coat. They were afraid that if they had cash, the Canadian authorities might take it. That was my experience, said Zadie. That was what life was about in those days. He knew nothing about Canada. I had no idea what we would face, he said. They came on a cattle ship converted for refugees. They disembarked in Halifax at Pier 21.

They immediately got on a plane to Toronto. As the plane lifted off, Jenny turned to Zadie and said, to Zadie and said, I left the coat on the boat. What did you say to her, I asked. Were you angry? Zadie looked at me in surprise. Why would I be angry, said Zadie. She didn't mean to do it. It was an accident. You loved her, I said. More than diamonds, said Zadie. They had made friends on the boat. Their friends were coming to Toronto by train. There was the chance our friends would find the coat, said Zadie.

There was the chance they would see that she had left the coat behind and they would bring it for us. Like always, Zadie had hope. They waited for three days. On the fourth, Zadie went down to the station to meet the Halifax train. His friends had brought the coat. Thank you. Having arrived in Toronto, Zadie and Jenny found an apartment in Kensington Market, which is where a Jewish immigrant, right off the boat, as they would say in those days, would naturally go. Zadie could speak Polish and German and Hebrew and Yiddish and a little Russian, but he couldn't speak English. A friend, a tailor who lived and worked in Kitchener, Ontario,

who wanted to try something different, came to Toronto and proposed that he and Zadie go into business together. The Korean War was underway, and the scrap metal business was booming. Zadie had enough money to buy a truck. The two men shook hands and made a deal. They bought a truck and began to visit all the little farm towns of southern Ontario. They bought old farm equipment and sold it as scrap. Zadie watched his partner negotiate each deal. As he watched and listened, he slowly began to learn English.

After a summer away from his wife and child, he decided he should move them closer to where he was working. He chose the little village of Listowel because he had observed that the farmers who lived there had the best equipment. There seemed to be more money in Listowel, said Zadie. They got an apartment and were just getting themselves established when the Korean War ended and the scrap business dried up. Almost overnight, no one wanted scrap metal.

Zadie's partner came to him and said he wanted out of the business. Zadie said, let me think about this. He came up with a price that he thought was fair, and he said to his partner, here's the price. Do you want to sell your half of the business to me for this price, or do you want to buy my half? You decide. Zadie didn't want the business either.

I thought the price I set would induce him to buy me out. There was a meeting, which the rabbi officiated. Zadie's partner said, I will sell to you. Zadie was caught off guard He didn't have the money to fulfill his side of the deal I had 24 hours to find it, said Zadie When he was living in Kensington Market Zadie had met a friend, a furrier

Who had offered to lend him money I have money I don't need, said the furrier. If you ever need money, tell me. This was a friend from your boyhood, I asked? A friend from Zeviercha? I thought to make such an offer you would have to know someone intimately. someone intimately. Zadie shook his head. You don't understand, said Zadie. I had no friends left from my boyhood. Everyone from my boyhood was gone. It was a man he knew from Bergen-Belsen. It was two in the morning when Zadie and his partner struck their deal. It was two in the morning when Zadie and his partner struck their deal. Zadie phoned the furrier and woke him up.

I need money, he said. The furrier put a check in the mail the next morning. Zadie was now the owner of a scrap business in a world where no one wanted scrap. He expanded the business. He started selling steel and welding equipment, sledgehammers and acetylene torches. In a few years, he was in a position to repay the loan. Nothing had been mentioned about how or when he should do that. He wrote a check for what he owed and added interest. I added the amount the furrier could have made on the money if he had kept it in the bank, said Zadie. The furrier returned Zadie's check. He said, this was not a business deal. It was a favor. He wouldn't take the interest.

I have to write a second check, said Zadie. Thank you. Zadie was slowly making his way in his new country. Both he and Jenny were learning English. Jenny carried a dictionary with her everywhere she went. Zadie tried to rely on his head. It must have been hard. He was the Jew who could barely speak English, who ran the junk business on the edge of town. This was in the 1950s,

a time when a deep and undeniable impulse to anti-Semitism ran through Canadian society. You know it must have been hard fitting in. Yet they did it. One night in 1959, John MacDonald and Don McLaren, two of the town's businessmen, came to Zadie and Jenny's house to talk. After a few scotches, they declared the reason for their visit. They were there to invite Zadie to join the local kinsman club.

They stayed until two in the morning. I was not used to this, said Zadie. In Poland, I never had any non-Jewish friends. It's the tradition in a kinsman club to hold mock trials for new members, a piece of light-hearted foolery to open the doors. On the day he was tried, Zadie was accused of running a house of ill repute at his scrap business. How, he was asked, could he possibly imagine joining the kinsman if such a thing was true? He didn't understand the charge.

What is this, he whispered to the man beside him, a house of ill repute? When he finally faced the judge, he didn't deny the charge or protest his innocence. Your honor, he said, we all know the Kinsman is a young men's club. I thought it would be a good place to look for customers. When he told the story years later at a Kinsman convention, Zadie received a standing ovation. It was an important day for me, he said. And here's the thing.

for me, he said. And here's the thing. Zadie, or David Kilburg, who was born in the early years of the last century in the Polish town of Zawiercza, a town where there was no electricity and who carried a lantern to find his way to and from school, and who lost his mother and father and brother and sister and uncles and aunts and cousins in the death camps, and uncounted friends, and who himself was taken beyond the edge of what most of us could endure, beyond what we might even imagine enduring, who was tortured both physically and mentally under the Nazi regime, and who came to Canada speaking not a word of English,

and started a junk business, and settled in Listowel, became the president of the Kinsman Club. And while he was president, his club won a major award. And then, in 1969, he became a city councillor. And then, the mayor of Listowel. The entire town were Gentiles, said Zadie, and they wanted a Jew for mayor. He served four terms and then he retired from politics. and then he retired from politics.

And when his wife of 63 years, Jenny, who herself survived Auschwitz, and who might after the war have gone with her sisters to Israel, but instead chose to stay in Germany so she could stay with him, when she became ill some 10 years ago, he nursed her himself even into his 90th year When everyone said she should be in a home That it was too much for him But he refused He looked after her until she died last autumn And that is when I met him

While he was sitting Shiva for her And that is why I went to his house in the spring, so he could tell me his life's story, so that I could share it with you this week, this week of weeks, this week of remembrance. I'd planned when I came to this part, which is the end of his story, that Zadie would be sitting next to me, right here, now.

He would have been listening to all of this. And when I came to this part, to the end, my plan was to turn to him without introduction, without preparation, and to say, So what do you think of that? So what do you think of that? He would have had something smart and funny to say Because he was so smart and funny And then we would have talked, he and I So you could have heard his voice But in this sweet, sad life

Things never end the way you want them to this sweet, sad life, things never end and so he is not here. So this week, as we gather in remembrance, he is the one I'm remembering. He was a teenager when war broke out, a boy really, and a decade later, he was a father of his own boy and living in Canada. And this week, I will be remembering Zadie and his remarkable journey. And I'll be thinking about all of the things that made his journey possible. Luck.

Courage. Chutzpah, love, and above all, hope. To David Kilburg, 1922 to 2012. L'chaim. That was Zadie's story. We recorded that story back in 2012. We miss Zadie so much. He had such a huge impact on our family. And I'm so glad that Zadie and Stuart got to know each other. And I'm so glad that Zadie and Stuart got to know each other. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is Greg Duclute.

Theme music is by Danny Michelle. And today's special episode featured music by the Manitoba band Finjin. All the songs you heard today are from Finjin's album called Dancing on Water. Thank you, Finjin. 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. Thank you.