Distressing news in the Island mediasphere this morning: among the six positions “made redundant” in the CBC cuts announced yesterday are four people I’ve had the pleasure of working with: reporter and erstwhile radio host Kerry Campbell, Compass assignment editor Claire Nantes, Compass reporter Ian Petrie, and radio studio director and technician Barry Vessey.

Kerry Campbell is one of those “jack of all media trades” people who seems equally comfortable as a TV reporter, radio reporter, radio features producer and radio host. He is arguably one of the better radio hosts ever to grace the Island radio dial, and if his “redundancy” means that we’ll no longer hear him in that capacity we will all be the worse for it.

Claire Nantes’ job as “assignment editor” is a behind-the-scenes roles that few people know exists but that is integral to production of a daily television newscast. Think of Claire as both the conductor of the symphony of reporters and camera operators, a liaison between the news-generating public and what gets covered, and someone who always needs her ear to the ground. I’ve no idea how you make a newscast — especially one that’s soon to expand to 90 minutes — without an assignment editor, especially one with Claire’s considerable talents.

Ian Petrie and Barry Vessey are in the slightly better position of not having had this all sprung on them, as they choose to make themselves redundant. But this doesn’t mean their absence will be felt any less.

I think it’s safe to say that Ian is the best television news reporter the Island has ever seen, someone with a great depth of understanding for his beat, the resource sector, and a talent for telling complicated stories and asking hard questions without needing to be confrontational or sensational. I’ve worked with Ian on several stories over the years, and it’s always been a joy; more importantly I look forward every evening to his reporting on Compass and I’m not quite sure I’ll properly be able to understand the Island without his nightly interpretation of it.

While Barry Vessey has a higher profile than Claire, as he squeaks out onto the air from time to time, his role as technician and studio director is, like Claire’s, a role that the public knows little about. I know Barry best from my days working with Wayne Collins on Island Morning: I would show up dark and early every week to do a live technology segment with Wayne on Island Morning and Barry would my first point of contact… he’d buzz me in the front door, greet when I made my way to the control room, and get me set up in the studio. Most importantly his steady demeanor was exactly what was needed to calm my frazzled pre-air nerves. A few years later, as a result of a bizarre double-booking, I found myself in a field at UPEI appearing on Morningside with Barry running the complicated-seeming gear that somehow beamed my voice to Toronto; again, having Barry behind the scenes, technically and otherwise, made it possible. In recent years as the CBC has scraped away more and more positions, and “synergized” others, Barry’s role has only grown in complexity and importance to the point where, for practical purposes, he’s “running the show.” I’m not sure how they’ll do it without him.

It’s one thing to hear about anonymous “redundancies” at the CBC and benignly imagine them away as “cutting the morning show in Moose Jaw.” It’s another thing entirely to know that when a position is “made redundant” there are smart, skilled people vital to the public broadcasting enterprise who are being sent away with it. Not only is a personal loss for those affected, but it’s a siphoning off of skilled interpreters at a time when the world needs people like this more than ever.

While I trust that all affected will land on their feet, and even return to the CBC in another guise, let’s all just take a moment to recognize them for the debt we owe them for their public service.

If you’re interested in getting a jump on the bidding for items at the Prince Street School Spring Fling Silent Auction, online bidding just opened.

I’m helping to promote the annual Spring Fling fundraiser at Prince Street School next week, and we want to prepare a flyer to send home to students in all the languages that our school families use. Here’s the paragraph:

Family, friends, and neighbors of Prince Street School students are invited to attend the ‘Spring Fling’ event at Prince Street School on June 5 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. There will be food, games, and other fun activities. Money raised is used to support school activities.

Looking to you multi-lingual in the readership to help get this translated into Farsi, Arabic, Turkish, Karen, Somali, Chinese, French, and Russian. Would really appreciate it, if you’re able: email it to me. Thanks.

If you are anything like me, the question “I wonder where the secret Korean grocery store in North River is” has never occurred to you. This is likely because the notion of their actually being a secret Korean grocery store in North River never occurred to you.

If this is the case, then prepare to be amazed and delighted as I lead you to the door: from Charlottetown drive as if you were going to Cornwall on the Trans-Canada Highway. Head over the North River Causeway and before you get to the PetroCan gasoline station on your right you’ll see, on the left, a white plaster horse with it’s right leg raised. Turn left at the horse and into the parking lot for Winfield Motel. On the left-hand side of the parking lot you’ll see a new building that looks like it’s not yet in use. Drive to the end of the building and park. Go to the last door on the building, the one with the Post-It note with Korean writing. If the door is locked, go around to the office of Winfield Motel and ask the woman behind the desk about for help (warning: she does not speak English) and help will appear.

Once you are admitted you will find a bright, modern grocery filled to the brim with the culinary wonders of Korea, everything from silkworm pupae to kimchi to dumplings to bottled squid to tiny table-top gas-fired grills for making bulgogi.

If there was any doubt as to Charlottetown becoming a culturally more diverse place of late, surely this all the evidence needed to prove the case. It’s not an exaggeration to say that when we arrived in Charlottetown 16 years ago if you’d told me the city would boast a Korean grocery I would have laughed you out of town: back then, outside of the always rich Lebanese menu, and with the notable exception of The Noodle House, “pizza” was about as “international” as food got in the city.

We live in exciting times.

From the Flickr stream of Nova (see Charlottetown councillor, graffiti artist seek compromise):

When people speak about “graffiti as art,” I think this is the kind of thing they’re talking about.

• The early bus up University Avenue leaves at 8:08 a.m., not at 8:00 a.m. It doesn’t stop at the Farmers’ Market, but it will stop in front of the Subway, which is almost the Farmers’ Market.
• Today is the last day that Garth and Peggy will be operating the Taylor’s Taters stall at the Market until the fall. Stop by and stock up on carrots and potatoes while you still can.
• You can still walk from the Farmers’ Market through the UPEI campus, across the creek and up beside the bestofpei store, but just barely: the new Canada Games track has made it hard to navigate and you need to walk around the track and down a precarious hill to get to the bridge over the creek (the bridge is leaning at a 15 degree angle and is perhaps not long for this world). It would be nice if UPEI would recreate this path — not only is it a shortcut to the mall, but it’s the only bit of “natural area” on the campus. Here’s the route we took.
• Basketball nets only cost $2.99. We bought two, to install on the Prince Street School court.
• Canadian Tire sells plug-in battery packs for Motorola and Nokia phones that will give you an additional 60 minutes of talk time and 60 hours of standby time for only $2.99. Seems like a good thing to keep in the glove box.
• You can now buy a 1 terabyte external disk drive at Future Shop for $169.00. The mind boggles.
• Future Shop is also selling heavily-discounted Nintendo DS games: we picked up a Go Diego Go for $8.00. They’re on a table at the front right by the door.
• Some people refer to a bus that is going from the Charlottetown Mall to the Confederation Centre as “going uptown.” I find this confusing, as I would call this “going downtown,” mostly because the Uptown Theatre in Toronto was at Yonge and Bloor, not Yonge and Front. As an aside, the first time I was ever asked for ID at a movie theatre was at a matinee screening of Beverly Hills Cop at the Uptown in 1984. It was rated ‘R’ and I was 18. I’ve never been asked for ID again.
• Despite being technically “open to traffic,” most Charlottetown Transit buses seem to have given up trying to navigate Fitzroy Street, as it’s often clogged with construction trucks and parked cars. So much for the 6 to 8 weeks closing predicted in January.
• One of the Charlottetown Transit buses has an internal code-name of “Little Junior.” Other buses are referred to by their colour scheme (“yellow over blue”, “green over burgundy,” etc.), or their destination (“Stratford One”). The Talking Bus is referred to internally as “The Talking Bus.”

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian opens tonight at the Brackley Drive-in. Show starts at 8:45. Pack the kids and the pillows in the car.

Here’s what the building on the corner of University and Fitzroy in downtown Charlottetown looked like on May 4:

Here’s what it looks like today:

They’ve done a lovely job renovating the outside of this building (rumours are that it’s even nicer inside). It’s nice to see life being breathed back into appropriately-scaled downtown buildings; too bad about the hulking yellow monolith that’s taking shape behind it.

The Old Triangle is open for business tonight.

For reference, here’s how my desk looked on the day I moved into the office six years ago:

Cleaned up my desk today and resolved that everything not required for day-to-day work would get removed to alternative storage. I found a lot of eligible things. Here’s an annotated collection of some of them.