Tuesday, March 18, 2008

News Cycle




Margaret Gallagher, 41 is a contributor to CBC Radio Ones The Early Edition and as an arts reporter. Paul Grant, 59, is a CBC national arts reporter and host of the jazz program Hot Air. If you never have seen them but heard them, you would find their voices pleasant and welcoming (rare in radio today) and that they convey an interest and enthusiasm in what they do (rare, too).

Both ride to work. Gallagher is her 50s Firestone, which she calls The Rocket, and Grant in a $300 custom Chinese-made Bhodisattva ("seeker of enlightenment").

Before I first met Gallagher she told me, "Expect a short Chinese woman with lots of hair." While she denies being a dragon lady, she says, "I like strong women. I once had a catering company called Komodo House. Southeast Asian women are thought to be named dragon ladies after the Komodo dragon."

Grant, like Gallagher, is from that rare species who are Vancouver-born. With his brother and father (who was the Light Keeper) he lived in Point Atkinson in the 60s. "It was like living in a fishbowl. People would climb the cliffs and look into our lives. I can still remember the hurricane of 1962." His brother became an inspector for Agriculture Canada and Grant a producer and agriculture reporter in Prince Edward Island. Grant is not only an expert on potatoes but also on soft pretzels. He sold them from a wagon at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

When Gallagher was 11 she made a pretend hour-long radio show on her Radio Shack tape recorder from her bedroom on Chilliwack Mountain. Gallagher sings classical Indonesian music very well and is a passionate but not very good ice-hockey player. If you were to give Grant a Blindfold Test (as he gives his guests in the 61 year-old Hot Air program and then asks them to guess the performer) he would hope it would be the saxophonists Ben Webster and Campbell Ryga.

The above can be found as hard copy in the March, 2008 issue of VLM (Vancouver's Lifestyle Magazine). © 2008 VLM/Alex Waterhouse-Hayward