Another Day Job Plug

While I'm blogging today, a heads up that you can catch a couple other examples of the day job for which the podcast is named: description, or described video, or...whatever. These shows will air on CBC, and that means they'll be streaming on VoicePrint's website everywhere in the world (click here and then click "listen now"). All times are eastern, Toronto time.

Tomorrow night (Thursday) at 8pm, the great Canadian opera Filumena will air on CBC-TV as part of the "Opening Night" show. For our description for the vision-impaired, my voice gets to say stuff like when our Italian-immigrant heroine grabs the gun from an aspiring politician, only to have him grab another one to aim at the constable that may have killed his son with whom she was having an affair. Uh, only I say it more succinctly while the stuff happens.

Then, this Sunday and Monday at 8pm each night, one of my favourite things we've ever worked on: the two-part miniseries Prairie Giant: the Tommy Douglas Story. This is about the guy who won a tv election for "The Greatest Canadian" a couple years back. And why was he voted first? Well, besides the fact George Stroumboulopoulos presented an awesome argument (as he usually does), Douglas helped make happen a lot of social policies that sort of define Canada as a country: universal health care, old age pensions, labour reforms...the list goes on and on. In fact it literally does at the end of the second night; I got to read that list, and I actually found it the most moving part of the show, and that's saying something because it's rife with moving moments. But the establishment of those social policies was the culmination of a pretty amazing story, and Michael Therriault (best known as Leo in the Toronto production of The Producers) does a remarkable job of bringing this tenacious and funny guy to life again. No matter where you're from, this is a great story, but if you're a Canadian living outside the country, you may want to check it out to remind you of where you came from.

By the way, The Tommy Douglas Story was originally supposed to air in January, but when the federal election was called, the CBC postponed it, which I and other people found veeeery suspicious. Here's a movie explaining the events and compassion that led to the establishment for the New Democratic Party. Was anyone actually nervous the NDP could've eclipsed the Tories and Grits with the story fresh in the voters' heads? The world may never know...