ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Some radio projects change a journalist’s life. The Earth Chronicles changed mine.
Between the winter of 1992 and spring of 1994, backpack on my back and a vintage 1963 Nagra III audio device over my shoulder (reel-to-reel), I traveled across Canada twice, visiting places and interviewing people from Prince Edward Island to the west coast of Vancouver Island, and in every province in between.
Out of this adventure, thirty-two hour-length documentaries about planet Earth, global ecology and the human endeavour — The Earth Chronicles.
These were halcyon times to finance a project of this sort. Co-producer Peter Hutton and I managed to raise an astonishing $120,000 for the Earth Chronicles radio project (equivalent to about $220,000 dollars today), from a dozen Canadian federal and provincial agencies and other private groups. Greyhound and Voyageur bus lines donated travel passes.
Producing the Earth Chronicles was a task of equally epic proportions.
In my room in a student abode lovingly dubbed the Yellow Brick House, countless hours were spent listening back to all these voices, magnetically captured on dozens and dozens of reels of quarter-inch tape; wax pencil and razor blade in hand, slicing, splicing and assembling sequences; lengths of quarter-inch tape around my neck, over my shoulder and knees, and piled up neatly across the floor.
Across town, in the production studio of CFMU, McMaster University Radio, I pumped out thirty-two editions of the Earth Chronicles, focusing on a variety of Earth and environment themes, and special places across Canada – without narration (something I announce at the start of this doc, with certain insistence).
Here’s one of them — Trees & Earth. Not everyone introduces themselves. Most do, eventually.
Listen to this documentary by clicking the audio panel on top, or going right here.
Thanks to the following for their wonderful music. I need to locate all these folks, and let them know I’ve resurrected their old tunes.
Paul Haslam (hammer dulcimer); Vanessa LeBourdais (Old Tree Stump, Clearcut); Colleen and Kelt Eccleston (Carmana … or Rainforest?); Timothy Weber & Straight From the Kitchen (Big Tree Shout); Dan Weisenberger & Eliya (forest-inspired instrumental)
Richard Sommer reads his Sonnet 12, and David Inman recites Shakespeare.
So, how did The Earth Chronicles change my life? I discovered Brandon, Manitoba, the “Wheat City,” and ended up moving out there. Another story.
Between the winter of 1992 and spring of 1994, backpack on my back and a vintage 1963 Nagra III audio device over my shoulder (reel-to-reel), I traveled across Canada twice, visiting places and interviewing people from Prince Edward Island to the west coast of Vancouver Island, and in every province in between.
Out of this adventure, thirty-two hour-length documentaries about planet Earth, global ecology and the human endeavour — The Earth Chronicles.
These were halcyon times to finance a project of this sort. Co-producer Peter Hutton and I managed to raise an astonishing $120,000 for the Earth Chronicles radio project (equivalent to about $220,000 dollars today), from a dozen Canadian federal and provincial agencies and other private groups. Greyhound and Voyageur bus lines donated travel passes.
Producing the Earth Chronicles was a task of equally epic proportions.
In my room in a student abode lovingly dubbed the Yellow Brick House, countless hours were spent listening back to all these voices, magnetically captured on dozens and dozens of reels of quarter-inch tape; wax pencil and razor blade in hand, slicing, splicing and assembling sequences; lengths of quarter-inch tape around my neck, over my shoulder and knees, and piled up neatly across the floor.
Across town, in the production studio of CFMU, McMaster University Radio, I pumped out thirty-two editions of the Earth Chronicles, focusing on a variety of Earth and environment themes, and special places across Canada – without narration (something I announce at the start of this doc, with certain insistence).
Here’s one of them — Trees & Earth. Not everyone introduces themselves. Most do, eventually.
Listen to this documentary by clicking the audio panel on top, or going right here.
Thanks to the following for their wonderful music. I need to locate all these folks, and let them know I’ve resurrected their old tunes.
Paul Haslam (hammer dulcimer); Vanessa LeBourdais (Old Tree Stump, Clearcut); Colleen and Kelt Eccleston (Carmana … or Rainforest?); Timothy Weber & Straight From the Kitchen (Big Tree Shout); Dan Weisenberger & Eliya (forest-inspired instrumental)
Richard Sommer reads his Sonnet 12, and David Inman recites Shakespeare.
So, how did The Earth Chronicles change my life? I discovered Brandon, Manitoba, the “Wheat City,” and ended up moving out there. Another story.
English
United States
TRANSCRIPT 🔗
Are you the producer of this podcast?
Add a podcast transcript
Need Audio-to-Text?
Transcribe with Listen411 in Just 60 Seconds
SEARCH PAST EPISODES
Search past episodes of The Green Planet Monitor.
OTHER EPISODES IN THIS PODCAST
At Columbia University, one of the US’s most prestigious academic institutions, the suppression of free speech and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence go hand in hand.
On May 12, in front of the university’s closely guarded gates at Broadway and West 116th Street (one of the…
Snowball Earth
Long before the explosion of multicellular life in Earth’s oceans, a half billion years ago, those oceans were covered in ice hundreds of meters thick.
Beneath that ice, darkness reigned, and photosynthetic organisms fell silent (there were no animals back then).
Snowball Earth, i…
A Conversation With Nikhil Pal Singh
From Caracas to Minnesota, from Iran and Cuba to the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City, from the Persian Gulf to the waters of the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, Donald Trump and his henchmen are collapsing US foreign military and domestic polic…
In Gaza today, rendered largely uninhabitable after a thousand days of joint US-Israeli genocide, young women and men are writing poetry — and publishing it.
Inside Nazi Germany’s ghettos and concentration camps — Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz, Auschwitz, Sobibor, Dachau, Buchenwald…
Love of Rock
By David Kattenburg
Between the winter of 1992 and spring 1994, backpack on my back and vintage, analog Nagra III reel-to-reel tape recorder over my shoulder, I traveled across Canada – twice — visiting places and interviewing people from Prince Edward Island to the west coast …
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from David Kattenburg, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
EDIT
Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date.
