Today, Rewind celebrates one of Canada's greatest singer/songwriters. He's a man who's received multiple Juno and Grammy awards as well as the Governor General's Performing Arts Award. He's an officer of the Order of Canada; he's been nominated for an academy award, and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame - twice. 

He's released more than 30 albums, he's been touring for over 40 years and reminds us that it's better to burn out than to fade away because rust never sleeps.

He's Neil Young. 

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As we come up to the Victoria Day weekend, it seems like the perfect occasion to celebrate our Queen, and her diamond jubilee that marks 60 years on the throne. On Rewind today, we revisit Queen Elizabeth's visits to Canada.

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Today it's a trip back to 1967 when Canada was celebrating our Centennial at Expo 67, the world's fair in Montreal. Every day the fair was on, CBC Radio aired a special program called Expodition.

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On today's Rewind, two segments from the series Canadian Snapshots, program that promised to (quote) "turn the lens of the radio camera to the wonders and oddities of Canada and bring the vast panorama of the country to the airwaves."

Canadian Snapshots aired weekly on the national network in 1939 and 1940 and was full of skits, music and actuality.

Both episodes today are from February 1940 and feature the voices of Lorne Greene and J. Frank Willis.

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"Canadian broadcasting should be Canadian." Pierre Juneau said those words in 1970 and he meant business. The head of the Canadian Radio-Television Commission said Canadian broadcasters were behaving like mouthpieces for American "entertainment factories," and so he introduced strict Canadian content rules for radio and television. Artists, actors, executives and politicians squared off. Would "CanCon" rules create a world-class recording industry and a "Canadian sound"? Or would they promote unwatchable shows, unlistenable music and mediocre Canadian talent? Now more than 40 years later, we look back at the arguments for and against CanCon.

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On today's show, all about a man, his car and twenty-three million dollars. It's the story of Malcolm Bricklin and the sports car he dreamed up. Imagine- a sleek, sexy sports car complete with gull-wing doors- built in New Brunswick and sold across North America.   Sounds like a strange dream but it was a reality- if only for a fleeting moment.

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Michael Enright's first job at the CBC Radio network was hosting a program called This Country in the Morning. It was the fall of 1974 and he followed Peter Gzowski, who had hosted the program for three years. Michael only did it for one season, but during that time, he says he had a lot of fun. Today two interviews from that year. The first is with two of the funniest British comics of the 60s and 70s- Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. They first met in a wildly successful act called Beyond the Fringe, and then forged a relationship taking their comedy act to television and on the road. When Michael talked to them in March 1975, they had been touring their show Good Evening for three years.

After that, an interview with George Cohon, who in December 1974 when Michael talked to him, was the president of McDonald's Canada.

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If you're going to do a show about Stuart McLean, where would you begin? 

Well you could start with the fact that in December 2011 he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.  Or you could say that his show Vinyl Café is required listening for over half a million Canadians. And it's big in the States too.

You could talk about his stories- how Dave Cooks the Turkey has become a Canadian Christmas tradition. You can find it on one of McLean's six best-selling Vinyl Café books or buy it on CD or download the podcast or just hear it on the radio. Yes, Stuart McLean is our own king of media. And he has earned his crown using the powerful tool of story-telling.
Stuart McLean began telling stories on CBC Radio back in 1979, making documentaries for Sunday Morning. He won an ACTRA award for his documentary on the Jonestown Massacre.

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(David Ferry, Midnight Cab - CBC Still Photo Collection)

Today on Rewind we have two episodes of a radio drama that ran in the early 1990s called Midnight Cab. It was written by James W. Nichol and part of The Mystery Project- a weekly series of detective plays. Midnight Cab follows the adventures of a nineteen-year-old would-be writer from Northern Ontario called Walker Devereaux, who moves to Toronto to become famous. In the meantime, he finds a job driving a cab at night while he finishes his first novel during the day. On every show Walker runs into a mystery he has to solve. Another major character is Walker's girlfriend Krista Papadopoulos, who is the dispatcher of the taxi company. 

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(Celine Dion - Radio-Canada/Jean-Pierre Karsenty 31/08/1986

In 1970, Pierre Juneau said that "Canadian broadcasting should be Canadian." At the time, he was the head of the CRTC- the Canadian Radio/Television Commission, and he was behind the implementation of new rules for Canadian content on radio and television. This helped spark a made- in- Canada music industry. Today, in honour of Pierre Juneau- who died in February- and the upcoming Juno awards which were named for him, we salute just a few of the many Canadian musicians who have made us proud.

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