The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Someone Asked For My Favourite TV Show -- Prepare Yourself!

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Lots of "stuff" in this pod as we kick off Week 38 with a few gems.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily day one week Here we go. Week 38. I still can't get over it, right? I still can't get over the fact that we started this back in the middle of March, thinking it may last, you know, five or six weeks. Knew it was going to be a difficult situation, but I thought, daily podcast, really? Can we go that long? Here we are, week 38, still going strong. Loving every minute of it.

I'm going to start off with a little story today. I mean, look, as you know, we could be telling stories about the difficulties out there, but I'm going to leave that for the news, okay? I'm going to tell you stories that, well, some of them are difficult. Some of them aren't so difficult. And some of them make you feel good. I'm going to give you a feel-good story right now. You know, as many of you know, our main home is here in Stratford, Ontario. Home of the Stratford Festival.

Home of the Stratford Festival. Home of the Stratford Chef School. Home of, you know, a fair number of little things. It's also home... It's also home to a guy by the name of Brad Herndon. Now, you've probably never heard of Brad Herndon. And that's okay. You're probably not supposed to have heard of Brad Herndon. But I'm going to tell you a little story about Brad, who I've never met, wouldn't know if he walked in the room right now.

But he made a lot of people happy last night. He and a lot of his friends. Brad works for the city of Stratford. Nation community area of the city of Stratford. Young guy in his thirties, I think. So they were, you know, spitballing ideas down at the old Stratford city complex, thinking about ways they could make people feel a little better as they got close to the holiday season. And one of the big things in Stratford has always been the Santa Claus parade,

just as it is in towns and cities and villages right across the country. Well, there we're looking at the situation here in Stratford, and it was pretty clear that we couldn't do the normal Santa Claus parade. We weren't going to be able to have kids and their parents and grandparents out on the street watching the floats go by. That wasn't going to happen. Which was going to upset a lot of people and upset a lot of kids. Now, Santa Claus parade day in Stratford, just as in all of other towns and cities across the country, is a big deal.

And there are big crowds come out. I mean, we're a small town, 30,000, but we have little communities around Stratford that come in for this as well. So what we're going to do. So Brad, apparently, so I'm told, Brad came up with an idea. Well, if the floats can't come and go through Stratford, and the kids can't line up on the streets to see the floats go by. Maybe we could do something that's much safer, but still connect kids to floats and kids to Santa.

And so the idea, when it was fully flesh flushed out was rather simple, really. The floats all came into town, built by all the different, you know, clubs and the police department and the fire department and the, I don't know all of them, but like Rotary Club, the Kiwanis Club, all those kind of different places. Each have a float. Bring the floats into town. Line them up on the most beautiful street we've got, which is right by the Avon River, right in the middle of town.

Beautiful evening, as it turned out last night, with an almost full moon. And all the floats were on one half of this roadway, right? So on one side. And they turned the other side into a one-way. And people drove their cars by the floats. Safe inside their family bubble, their family car. And you know what? The idea was this would go from 5 to 7 last night.

Well, by 5 o'clock, there were hundreds of cars lined up, ready to get in the start, because they closed off certain streets around the area, but they set it up in such a fashion that the cars could all come down. So alongside the river, looking at the floats, seeing Santa the whole bit. So lined up before five o'clock and it kept going well after 7. Last time I checked, around 8 o'clock, there were still lots of cars lined up to go through. Now, whether they'd come from out of town, whether some people were doing a second tour,

who knows, but it worked. And for a heck of a lot of kids in Stratford, it was a big deal. They got to see the parade in ways they'd never seen it before, and for some it was the first time they'd ever seen a parade, Santa Claus parade. They saw the old man, and it was a beautiful evening. It wasn't that cold.

It didn't matter. They were in the warmth of their car. They got to wave. One float at a time as they drove slowly by. There was a great scene. And that snapshot on the cover art today is kind of from a distance. Looking back at it. So you can basically just see the lights.

It's from the other side of the river. Anyway, when I heard this, I asked the good mayor of Stratford, Dan Matheson, who was responsible for this? And Dan being the kind of guy Dan is, didn't say, hey, it was the mayor's office. Oh, no. He found out it was Brad Herndon in the recreation and community engagement part of the city. Young guy in his 30s. He'd come up with the idea,

and then I guess a lot of people helped make it happen. But it was great. And you know what? Maybe some other towns and cities across the country are thinking similar things. And if they're thinking but haven't come up with an idea, steal this one. It's a good one.

The kids loved it. And it was a real family outing. So there you go. Now I got another, uh, Christmas holiday item for you. And this one, you know, I think a lot of us have figured, you know, because there's all been this, a lot of talk lately, and we had a contest last week, and I'll get to that again in a moment. But this whole idea of like thinking positive, trying to come up with ideas to get us through what's going to be a very difficult winter. And one of the ways of doing that, obviously, is getting a Christmas tree. But hey, it's still November. It's a little early for Christmas trees, no?

Apparently not. I saw more than a few Christmas trees last night in the windows of houses along that area where the parade was taking place on one side of the river in Stratford. But here's something that will grab your attention and make you think about when you're going to get your Christmas tree. In Britain, where Christmas trees are, you know,

maybe not quite as big a deal as they are here, but they're a pretty big deal. I'm reading here from The Guardian. Christmas trees are up already and so are sales. Growers have sold 24% more trees so far this year than at the same time in 2019, according to the old BCTGA. You know what that is.

The British Christmas Tree Growers Association. Some British farms had their entire crops snapped up by mid-November over fears that the pandemic has made it harder to import trees. According to Ollie Combe, this year's champion Christmas tree grower, a stock list kept by the UK's 320 tree growers has nothing left on it, said Combe, the owner of York Christmas Trees, a family-run farm in Yorkshire

that sells about 11,000 trees a year. His prize for winning the BCTGA show earlier this month was to supply a 20-foot Nordman fir to Downing Street. That's where Bojo lives, right fir to Downing Street. That's where Bojo lives, right? 10 Downing Street. He has trees left for regular customers, but has been turning away new business. I have a friend in Lincolnshire with a slightly bigger business,

and he's sold out. Nothing left to sell. All right. Well, if that's happening over there, you might want to think that it might happen here. Now, the other interesting thing in this article is it says that usually, you know, pre-Christmas, it's the businesses that are out there

leaving the impression they're going to be sold out of different things. Apparently, that's not the case this year. The case this year is being made by customers who are going out there and buying stuff much earlier than usual, and the stocks are dropping rapidly. So I don't know whether that's going to happen here. We've got a much bigger stockpile, obviously, of Christmas trees.

But people are, you know, focused on making their life more enjoyable during a very difficult time, and part of it will be making sure there's a well-decorated tree in their house, on their porch, in their yard. You name it. Okay. I was going to tell you about last week's contest. Remember? I kind of thought of it at the last moment. I think on Thursday I announced it,

that we'd offer up a signed copy of Extraordinary Canadians, number one on the Canadian non-fiction list. At least it was for the last two weeks. This week's ranking won't come out until the middle of the week. Nevertheless, a signed copy of Extraordinary Canadians written by yours truly and my co-author Mark Boldich. If, or not if, but to the writer of the best letter, in my opinion, that talked about something good about the last eight or nine months

that's come out of this, you know, terrible situation. And boom, like, I don't know, 20, 30 letters Thursday night, which is great. And I read, if you check out Friday's podcast, I read the weekend special last week. I read, I don't know, eight or ten of them. And we had a winner with the last one. Well, over the weekend, I kept getting letters,

even though the contest was over. So I thought, we better do this again. So we will. We'll run another contest, a new contest, for this Friday's weekend special. Same theme. I think it's fun. Be imaginative.

Be innovative. Don't be obvious. Okay? That was what the winner chose to do last week. So let's do it again. I'll get another copy of the book ready. Meanwhile, the book is available at every bookstore in the country. Some apparently have sold out and are backordered already.

But if you try hard enough, you can find it. If you don't want to go to a store, given the nature of things right now, you can order online. Indigo is championing this book. I think they've got a big announcement coming out this week about Extraordinary Canadians. championing this book. I think they've got a big announcement coming out this week about Extraordinary Canadians. Amazon, Costco, Walmart, as well, of course, as your independent bookseller.

And, you know, all cities have them. Most towns have them. Most villages, or not most, perhaps some villages have independent booksellers. And you want to support local. You want to support local if you're the bookseller by making sure you give visibility to local authors. And you want to make sure, as a consumer, that you support your local businesses. Which is harder and harder for local businesses these days, quite apart from the pandemic. You know, when you've got, when you can order online and the book arrives at your house the next day, that's pretty good service.

But there's nothing like the service you get from your local bookseller, right? So anyway, the contest will continue this week. So give it some thought. Think about something that's happened to you this year that wouldn't have happened if the pandemic hadn't happened. Something that's actually, in spite of everything, has made you feel good. Don't be shy. Be innovative.

Okay, this is going to be relatively short. Bridge Daily for this first day of the week of week 38. I can give you a hint as to what's coming up. Bruce will be joining us on Wednesday. We're tossing around a couple of ideas on how to go about Wednesday's podcast. I think we're kind of done for the moment with the U.S. story. I'm intrigued watching this debate around vaccines and how many Canada's got and when Canada's going to have them. And a lot of different things around that

issue. Not only the basic facts as just mentioned there, but also the way the story's covered. Because I think it's an interesting thing to discuss. So Bruce and I are toying with that idea and whether or not we bring in a guest. We might do that. So we're thinking about that.

And we're really looking forward to, in two weeks' time, David Axelrod will be joining us, a former top senior policy advisor to President Barack Obama. David will be joining us, I think from Chicago. He lives in Chicago, but he's back and forth Chicago, New York all the time. So we'll really look forward to hearing what he has to say about a number of things. That's two weeks time. I think it's December 16, somewhere around there. Should be the Wednesday of that week.

And then this Friday, of course, as just mentioned a moment ago, we will have the weekend special, which will be your letters and your comments and your thoughts and your questions that relate to something good. And the letter that strikes me the most will receive an autographed copy of Extraordinary Canadians. At last, check. Number one on the Canadian non-fiction bestseller list. Which, of course, is where you want to be, right?

Okay. Okay. So, last point. We've talked about this a couple of times, about sleep patterns, and how as you get older, you tend to wake up earlier. Often you go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. Sleep patterns and times, you know, in length, as you get older, seems to be shorter. You know, when you were a kid, eight or nine hours a night was,

you were trying to get that. And usually it wasn't that hard to get it. When you get older, as you get older, it's hard to get anywhere near those hours. At least it is for me. So if I have a night of seven hours sleep, that's really good for me. It's usually more like six. So I get up early. Sometimes I get up very early, you know, four 35 o'clock and you know, I'll slink downstairs and look online, see what's been going on overnight, check a few things out.

And in the heat of this story on COVID, when I look back at the last 38 weeks, there have been an awful lot of those mornings I got up and was consumed by the coronavirus, COVID-19 pandemic story. Just looking at everything I could find, reading everything I could find, watching all the cable news operations in the morning, whether it was CBC or CTV or MSNBC or CNN, even occasionally Fox. I had a look at them all. Consumed by them.

And then the U.S. election started, and I was consumed by that story. But I can tell you in the last couple of weeks, I've gone, get me away from this stuff. I just, like, would really like a break occasionally. Still following the stories. All of them. But consumed, I'm over that. I'd really like to focus, you know, on something else. Something mindless at times.

So what I've done when I get up at 4.30 or 5 o'clock in the morning and I don't want to watch cable news, I kind of search the guide on their television trying to find things. And there are a couple of shows, and I'll mention one of them, that I watch a lot of. And quite frankly, I've watched a lot of over the last, I don't know, 10 years. Somebody asked me once, aside from news, what is your favorite television show these days? And I didn't hesitate.

I said it right out of the gate. Canadian Pickers. I love that show. Canadian Pickers. Sheldon and Scott. They're syndicated in different parts of the world where the show is called, you know, Cash Cowboys or something. But these are two Canadian guys from Alberta

getting their truck and they drive around the country and they pick. They go into old barns and antique stores and they look for deals, which they can take back to Alberta and make a little profit on. They're both real characters. They're funny. Good, clean Canadian boys it's not a show full of beeps like some of the American reality shows where the guys are swearing at the drop of a hat

these two guys just like talk Canadian. They had a lot of joy about finding old oil cans or a pair of spurs or a cowboy hat, an old table, an old car. You name it. Now, here's the thing about Canadian pickers, which I didn't know until, I don't know, I guess it was pre-pandemic. I was at one of those award shows. They were

giving me something, you know, you know you're done when they start handing out the lifetime achievement awards, right? I got a bunch of those. I finally told him the last one. I said, okay, I get it. I get the hint. I'm out of here. That was before I started the podcast. Anyway, I was, I'd been given some award and after the actual show, people were mingling and you know having a drink or just chattering and uh this guy came up to me and introduced to me himself to me and um you know said he'd watched the news over the years and was a fan and just wanted to say uh say some nice things i said that's great i great. I said, what do you do?

He says, well, I'm the, I think he said executive producer. It might have been, you know, manager or something, but let's say it was executive producer. He said, I'm the executive producer of Canadian Pickers. And I went, that is my favorite all-time show. I love Canadian Pickers. And he said, well, and I said, I would give anything to be on Canadian Pickers.

Can you get me into that show? I want to be on Canadian Pickers. I want to travel, you know, for at least one episode with Sheldon and Scott. And he said, I'd love to do that. And they'd get a real kick out of that. But the show was canceled. I said, what?

And this was like 2018. We're having this conversation. And he said, no, no, no. The show was cancelled in in 2013 he said what are you talking about i watch it it's on every day he said all reruns they're great he says we we're in reruns we did three seasons like 39 episodes and they run them on a loop they just keep running them. And I thought, well, you know, some of those old oil cans I thought I'd seen before.

And he said, no, no, no. You know, we run it, and it's successful in the rerun format. And I said, well, why'd you stop? He says, we couldn't afford to keep doing it. I said, you're shown all the way around the world. You're in Australia and the UK and you name it. He said, yeah, well, reruns don't bring in a lot of cash these days. And that's why I got to stop.

So the show has been off the air for, you know, off new episodes for seven or eight years, but it's still on the air in reruns. And that's what I'm watching at, you know, five o'clock in the morning. Canadian Pickers. And occasionally I'll watch American Pickers, but hey, I'm a Canadian. I'm a Sheldon Scott guy. Reruns. A good series will last forever

you know what else I watched the other night I even convinced Cynthia to watch one episode Fawlty Towers that's my British heritage right but Fawlty Towers that's a classic there are only two seasons I think like six episodes a season so classic. There are only two seasons, I think,

like six episodes a season, so I think there are only being like 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers. But they're great. Especially the one about the German family that comes to visit Fawlty Towers.

That's just hilarious. Anyway, get yourself together, Peter. You've had a good career, buddy, but you never, you never got on Canadian Pickers. And for that,

I will always be sad. Such a great show. All right, my friends, that gets us off to another sterling start, another big week for the Bridge Daily as we launch week 38 of our little podcast. And I hope you've had something to think about,

something to smile about, as we march on into a week of, hopefully, things other than just Canadian Pickers. Come on, deep down, you wish you'd been on Canadian Pickers too, don't you? Of course you do. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge Daily.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.