{lost and found} cbc's outfront

In the fall of the 2007, I travelled to Saskatchewan for the first time and took my mom with me. It wasn't mom's first time. She lived there from 1967 to 1969. But she hadn't been back there in forty years.

[mom in front of training hospital, Prince Albert Saskatchewan 1967]

Mom immigrated from rural Philippines to rural Saskatchewan in 1967. She responded to an ad in a Filipino newspaper saying Canada was recruiting nurses. A letter and a few documents sent and received, soon she was on a plane to Canada, where, in exchange for nursing, she would become a Canadian citizen*.


That trip in 2007 was overwhelming, wonderful and emotional. Not only was it a homecoming of sorts, it was also the first time I'd travelled anywhere with just my mom. This trip was research for a play I am writing inspired by her first to years in Canada [more on that later]. As an added bonus, I successfully pitched the trip to CBC Radio's documentary program Outfront. The resulting piece, Yellow Rubber Boots, aired on the CBC in March 2008 and lived in what I believed was podcast perpetuity on the Outfront CBC Website. I was wrong.


In March 2009, as part of sweeping cutbacks at the CBC, Outfront was cancelled. I naively believed that despite the cut, the Outfront archives would still exist on the CBC website. Nope.


I am sure you can imagine my delight when a recent google search discovered a website called Methings.com had archived all the episodes of The Best of Outfront. And lo and behold, I found my piece, mislabeled in the week of of March 12, 2006, but who cares!


So, in the spirit of lost and found, here's the link to the radio documentary Yellow Rubber Boots. Have a listen if you have the time. And rummage through the rest of the archives to listen to more buried treasures.

[mom in front of training hospital, Prince Albert Saskatchewan, 40 years later]

*I've been ruminating a lot over the past few days on this article published in this past Saturday's Globe and Mail. Moreover, I have been upset over the comments online and feeling rather helpless about it.  Instead of adding to the comments, this blogpost is my Playwright-Daughter-of-a-First-Wave-Filipino-Canadian response.