SpokenWeb Podcast

S3-Episode 7

‘The archive is messy and so are we’: Decoding the Women and Words Collection

Simon Fraser University’s Special Collections and Rare Books holds the rich Women and Words Collection, which contains more than one hundred recordings from the Women and Words Conference in 1983, a decade of WestWord writing retreats and workshops, and a number of other readings, meetings, workshops, and events. Although the audio in this collection has a significant paper archive to accompany it, the absence of pre-existing metadata made it difficult to identify the recordings. This episode is framed by how two research assistants, Kandice Sharren and Kate Moffatt, encountered the collection—one physically, in the archive, and the other solely with digitized audio recordings and scanned print materials—and takes us behind-the-scenes of their work to make sense of both its depths and the Women and Words Society’s history.

Special thanks to Tony Power, librarian and curator of the Contemporary Literature Collection at Simon Fraser University, and to SFU’s Special Collections and Rare Books.

IMAGE GALLERY

Page 2 of the Women and Words Conference from 1983, containing a note from the organizers. Photo credit: courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.
First page of a timeline outlining WestWord retreat organization, application, and admittance processes. Photo credit: taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.
Press release for WestWord III from February 1987. Photo credit: taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.
Poster for the WestWord III public events, readings, and panels, including a reading by Sharon Thesen. Photo credit: Taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.
The tape holding the Sharon Thesen reading from August 18, 1987 (MsC23-85). Photo credit: courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.
Poster for WestWord V public events, readings, and panels. Photo credit: Taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.
Poster for WestWord VI public events and readings. Photo credit: Taken by Kandice Sharren, courtesy of SFU Bennett Library Special Collections & Rare Books.

–

00:06	SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Music:	[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don’t know how much projection to do here.
00:18	Hannah McGregor:	What does literature sound like? What stories will we hear if we listen to the archive? Welcome to The SpokenWeb Podcast: Stories about how literature sounds. My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I’ll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history, and our contemporary responses to it, created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. Voiceprint. Celebrations. Paper Tygers. These are the names of three campus radio shows produced in the late 70s and early 80s at the University of Alberta, and broadcast province-wide. All three explored how literature, culture, and politics intersect: Voiceprint was the first and longest-running of the three, about poetics, speech, and communications theory; “Celebrations” celebrated the 75th anniversary of the University of Alberta in 1983; and “Paper Tygers” was about the practical ins-and-outs of being a writer. They were created by University of Alberta Masters student Jars Balan, and had production teams and guests that ranged from other students—like the show’s audio engineer and production assistant, Terri Wynnyck—to librarians, professors, and writers. In today’s episode, SpokenWeb contributors Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya celebrate and share the history of these three campus radio shows they found preserved in the University of Alberta archives. As Jars himself says in this episode, campus radio was an opportunity to share the kinds of thinking and conversations happening inside the university with those outside of it, too. But where were these campus radio shows produced, and how? What, exactly, were the circumstances of their creation? How were they received? And what echoes of campus radio do we hear in scholarly podcasting today? Featuring interviews with producer Jars Balan and audio engineer Terry Wynnyck, and archival audio of Western Canadian poets Doug Barbour and Phyllis Webb, Ariel, Nick, and Chelsea dive into the rich history of campus radio, from conception and script-writing to the physical cutting and editing of tape. We invite you to listen to this episode with us and celebrate those early campus radio shows, and the people who made them. Here are Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya with Episode 8 of our third season of the SpokenWeb Podcast: “Academics on Air”. [Music Interlude: SpokenWeb Podcast Theme Song]
02:55	Jars Balan	Hello and welcome to “Celebrations”. [Trumpet Fanfare]
03:33	Michael O’Driscoll, Zoom, 21 June 2021:	Every great Spoken Web story starts with a box of something or other…
03:37	Chelsea Miya:	It’s June, 2021. The Spoken Web Alberta team has gathered together over Zoom. We’re here to witness the unboxing of the archive. Michael O’Driscoll, director of Spoken Web U Alberta, is sitting next to a cardboard box.
03:52	Michael O’Driscoll, Zoom, 21 June 2021:	I got these by the way, directly from Jars. I had to drive by his house and picked them up from his front porch and we had a nice socially distanced talk about things. I have been very well behaved. I haven’t even peeked. I have no idea. Ooh, what is in here? And they’ve been sitting here in my office next to me for a, for weeks now. And I, and I have resisted the urge to check.
04:16	Ariel Kroon:	This is me Ariel.
04:19	Chelsea Miya:	And this is me Chelsea.
04:21	Nick Beauchesne:	This is Nick reporting.
04:23	Ariel Kroon:	The three of us are the producers of this SpokenWeb Podcast episode. We’re also researchers at the University of Alberta where we’ve been digitizing the “Voiceprint” series. Over hours of listening, we feel like we’ve gotten to know this forgotten campus radio show, and its host Jars, pretty well. We’re fans.
04:41	Chelsea Miya, Zoom, [21 June 2021]:	It makes it feel more…
04:45	ArielKroon, Zoom, [21 June 2021]:	Tangible?
04:45	Chelsea Miya, Zoom, [21 June 2021]:	Tangible, yeah. And I think it’ll give us a sense of the amount of work but also that the chaos and energy that went into this. [Laughter]
04:53	Ariel Kroon:	Michael peels back the cardboard flaps and reaches inside [Sound Effect: Box Opening, Papers Shuffling] He pulls out a stack of tapes.
04:58	Michael O’Driscoll, Zoom, 21 June 2021:	So these are cassette recordings [Papers Shuffling] I would assume of some of the voice of nine different “Voiceprint” broadcasts, some of which we currently have a record of and some of which are entirely new.
05:15	Ariel Kroon:	He also finds stacks of brown manila folders, which resemble case files. Scribbled across each folder is the name of a different episode. And they are stuffed with material.
05:28	Michael O’Driscoll, Zoom, 21 June 2021:	[Papers Shuffling Throughout] So these are clearly the background research papers that were being used to develop ideas and the concepts for the different “Voiceprint” issues that Jars was developing at the time. So there’s a lot here in terms of the context for the developmental stuff, which I think is pretty interesting. Some library reference materials, some background on the history of the printed word, cognitive relations to the printed word. So, all kinds of interesting things, for sure. What else do we have in here? And some time codes for the materials that he was working with… a handwritten set of interview questions for Phyllis Webb [Unknown Voice: Oh that’s cool!] [Pause] –Wow.
06:25	Ariel Kroon:	[Start Music: Ambient Atmospheric Music] When we first stumbled upon this archive, or rather were handed it in a cardboard box, we thought the celebrity guests were the coup. We had hours of interviews and performances from Canadian literary stars like Phyllis Webb. These recordings hadn’t been played in decades and hardly anyone knew about their existence. But as we listened to the tapes, we realized that Jars, the host of the show, was himself a fascinating character. Rather than centring on the poets, our episode looks back on the heyday of campus radio culture… and tells the story of how students like Jars and radio aide Terri Wynnyck broke ground by experimenting with radio as a form of public scholarship. [End Music: Ambient Atmospheric Music]
07:17	Chelsea Miya:	[Audio Clip: Digital Musical Notes] [Audio Clip: Students Walking, Chatting] There are about 80 different college and university-affiliated campus radio stations across Canada. And each of these stations has their own unique story and history. CKUA radio is Canada’s first public broadcaster. [Start Music: Fanny Brice’s “Second Hand Rose”] It’s story begins on the University of Alberta campus in 1927. The school received a grant from the province to start its own radio station setting up shop in the Department of Extension.Over the next fifty years, CKUA became more than just a campus radio station. From the beginning, they experimented with new formats: radio dramas, square-dancing lessons, even an Alcoholics Anonymous program. The station broadcasts to remote areas, reaching everyone from farmers to fur trappers. But even as listenership expanded, CKUA still maintained close ties with the University. [End Music: Fanny Brice’s “Second Hand Rose”] Brian Fauteux, Professor of Music at UAlberta, explains…
08:18	Audio Recording, Brian Fauteux, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:	The university still maintains a couple hours a week for programming, maintaining that sort of focus on radio talks and lectures as well as what they were calling good music, classical music often. This idea that they were uplifting listeners or passing on something that was the domain of the university. So it’s a very unique station in that sense. It’s sort of education as framed by showcasing arts and culture that maybe you wouldn’t hear on commercial radio.
08:50	Chelsea Miya:	[Start Music: Rock Music] Then the 70’s arrive. A time of self-expression and rebelling against the man. In Quebec and Alberta, separatism is in the air. The federal and provincial governments clash over broadcasting rights, and CKUA gets caught in the middle. [End Music: Rock Music] At this point, CKUA is operated by Alberta Telephones, which is illegal under federal rules. [Start Music: Instrumental] But just as things are looking dire, ACCESS, The Alberta Educational Communications Corporation, is created. Educational programs have special status under new broadcast regulations. And ACCESS offers CKUA a new license. And so the station was reborn. [End Music: Instrumental]
09:39	Nick Beauchesne:	[Sound Effect: Radio Signal Test Tone] CKUA was back on air and better than before! Originally, CKUA had only aired on AM frequencies, which transmit farther, but have poorer sound quality and are best suited for talk radio. [Start Music: Electronic Instrumental] Now, CKUA could broadcast with 100,000 watt transmitters, which were 200 times more powerful than what they had before, and the station aired on the higher bandwidth FM frequencies. With these new transmitters, everyone in Alberta could tune into their shows, and every note could be heard, clear and crisp. It was during this period of intense expansion and revitalization that Jars Balan joined the station. [End Music: Electronic Instrumental]
10:25	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:	Now I did my undergraduate work uh in at the University of Toronto. I did an Honours BA in English Literature there. And my plan was to take two or three years off with a friend and fix up his van and drive to the West Coast, work at the sawmill, make a pile of money, go to Mexico, hang out, smoke a lot of pot, party, and then come back and enter an MA program. It all kind of fell through because when we got to BC the forestry industry was in the doldrums, there was no work and we came back here. I ended up working on a farm near the international airport. In the meantime I found out there were a couple of profs in the English department who are very sympatico to my literary interests: Stephen Scobie and Doug Barbour. So I met with them and I decided, well this a good place to do my MA. So I signed up for an MA in ‘77 and entered the MA program in English/Creative Writing.
11:21	Ariel Kroon:	The Executive Producer of the University’s Department of Radio and Television was Roman Onifrijchuck.
11:26	Archival Recording, Jars Balan, Voiceprint, 4 Mar 1981:	The problem of sexist language is perhaps most frequently encountered by people working in the field of publishing.
11:32	Arielle Kroon:	As it turned out, Jars and Roman were old friends. They had spent several summers working together as camp counselors at a Ukrainian summer camp.
11:41	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:	[Sound Effect: Children Playing] It was kind of a bunch of us 60’s guys running a camp, a summer camp, the way we thought we should have gone to summer camp and never did at the, you know, it was pretty loosey goosey, but it was very successful and popular, but we became very good friends.
11:55	Ariel Kroon:	Jars had just entered UAlberta’s masters program in English, when Roman approached him to ask if he had an idea for a show.
12:02	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:	The whole purpose of CKUA was to produce programming that highlighted and showcased the work of scholars at the U of A. And so I sketched out this concept for a show called “Voiceprint”. Because I was trying to work towards a materialist approach to poetics [Start Music: Instrumental] by which I meant poetics based on a knowledge of linguistics, communications theory, nuts and bolts sort of use of language and communication strategy and how that can be translated into making poetry more effective. And so Voiceprint for me became that working document that enabled me to work out my theories. Roman liked the idea. They gave me 13 half-hour shows. We started with that in ’79 and that was considered successful. So I said, you know, I can do, I really could use an hour. And they agreed to that. And I fleshed it out into what then became 39 one hour shows in the Voiceprint series.
13:09	Ariel Kroon:	Before he knew it, one show became three. Jars also hosted the “Celebrations” series, interviewing the university’s writers-in-residence, authors like Marian Engel and Margaret Atwood. [End Music: Instrumental]
13:20	Archival Audio, Jars Balan, 1983-84:	[Sound Effect: Trumpet Fanfare] Our guest tonight is the novelist and short story writer Marian Engel… Robert Kroetsch… Margaret Atwood… Dorothy Livesay… poet Phyllis Webb…
13:28	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:	And so we took advantage of the fact that they were on campus in Edmonton for me to be able to interview them. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
13:37	Ariel Kroon:	His third radio show, “Paper Tygers”, was about the ins and outs of being a writer. For example, advice on how to find an agent and land a book deal.
13:46	Archival Audio, Jars Balan, [1 Jan. 1982]	“Paper Tygers”, a program for creative and working writers.
13:50	Ariel Kroon:	While completing his masters, Jars was also producing these three radio shows. It was like having another full-time gig.
13:57	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:	I was very lucky. I basically used the shows to pay for my education. I didn’t have to take any tutorials or anything like that. So I wasn’t beholden to my professors for any work. For me it was very important. I wanted to be independent. I was spared the agony of having to mark undergraduate papers which I hated to read and do even though I was an undergraduate once myself. By the time I finished my MA I was supporting myself freelance writing so – I was paid for the Voiceprint, they were $750 bucks a show and I got pretty good at turning out a show a week, which in those dollars was pretty good money and I was able to pay off my student debt and support myself.
14:41	Ariel Kroon:	“Voiceprint” was his biggest “hit.” The show was subtitled “Speech, language, communications technology, and the Literary Arts in a Changing World.”
14:51	Archival Audio, Jars Balan, [4 March 1981]	[Digital Musical Notes] “Voiceprint”.
14:54	Ariel Kroon:	The topic seemed to strike a chord with listeners, finding a wider audience outside of the university campus. “Voiceprint” ran for three years on CKUA’s Access Radio station. At its peak, it aired every week on Wednesdays at 7pm. This is prime-time for radio shows.Voiceprint earned a glowing review in the Edmonton Journal. The reviewer, quoting Roman, calls it “Sesame Street for adults.” Voiceprint invited the public to confront the ways in which language, politics, and culture intersect. This radio series was unafraid to tackle controversial subjects, such as the subtleties of sexism in language, with a nuanced, academic perspective. As the critic from the Edmonton Journal put it…
15:35	Audio Recording, Re-enactment of Edmonton Journal Review:	[Sound Effect: Typewriter keys] These programs are most assuredly not straight lectures, not a solitary patrician male voice droning on into the fog of the airwaves. “Voiceprint” is, in the jargon of electronic media, a magazine show. The format is the montage: many voices, recurring theme segments, a bit of music, readings, interviews. Jars Balan, an Edmonton poet and editor, is the producer and host. He asks the questions we want to ask of linguists, anthropologists, doctors, classicists, writers…
16:07	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:	When you think about it, the concept from the university’s view is a good one! All this work goes on at the university and if you’re not reading academic journals and you aren’t attending lectures, you don’t know what the hell these people are doing. And so this was an attempt to sort of get that out into a wider audience. You’d get somebody, I remember somebody saying, “so I caught your show was driving to Lethbridge from Calgary”… it obviously did reach an audience.
16:33	Nick Beauchesne:	Jars was the host of “Voiceprint”. But the show was a collaborative effort. At least ten people worked on the production team. Some were students, like Jars. Others were UAlberta staff and professors, whom Jars recruited to produce special segments.
16:48	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:	I took advantage. There were people already involved in producing things in the Department of Radio and Television and I would use them for my program too for voices. So, Anna Altmann, who was a librarian, was somebody who was doing some other recording stuff and I said oh great, would you read these portions of the show, the scripted portions, and did various sound work, narrative work with us.
17:13	Nick Beauchesne:	Anna stood out to us, as listeners, because she speaks with a distinct affectation called “received pronunciation.” As heard in this clip, Anna hosted a bibliographic segment, where she would recommended “must-read” books about the different episode topics.
17:31	Audio Recording, Anna Altmann, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	If you’d like to learn more about language and problem of sexism, probably the best place to begin reading is a very accessible book, titled Words and Women.
17:41	Nick Beauchesne:	It turns out her mind was as noteworthy as her voice; she went on to become director of UAlberta’s School of Library and Information Science. And then there was Richard Braun who provided the definitions for some key words. Here he is discussing how sexism is ingrained in language.
18:02	Archival Record, Roman Onifrijchuck, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	Let’s look at those two words: male and female.
18:03	Archival Record, Richard Braun, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	Male, female. A very annoying thing that happens in English. An intentional misspelling, mispronunciation, to make it appear that “male” is the basic thing and upon it you add the meaningless “fe.”
18:20	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:	Richard Braun was an unusual character that I found in the classics department. He taught classics, but his real passion was etymology and he was great and he was quite eccentric, both looking and just in his manner. But he really enjoyed –I’d give him a list of words that I thought related to the theme of the show and he would look them up, the history of the word and whatever, and talk about it in a very engaging way. I wish I had a picture of him because he looked like a professor [Laughs]. Terri was the person probably I worked most closely with.
18:57	Nick Beauchesne:	Terri Wynnyk, the Production Assistant, was also a student at UAlberta, and the tech guru of the team.
19:04	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	[Audio of Tape Recording Stopping and Starting Throughout] I think I was the tech guru for Jars because Jars was so technically incompetent. Jars was always living in his head, and he couldn’t figure out how to use a tape recorder.
19:17	Nick Beauchesne:	She remembers the day that she got recruited to work for the campus radio station.
19:22	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	So I was studying political science and economics at the University of Alberta. And and one of my sociology classes, the sociology of sex roles, I met this wild and crazy guy named Manfred Loucat who said, “Hey you’ve got to come and work at the university radio station. We’re just opening it up, we’re just opening it up, it’s been closed for a year, It’s been mothballed and we’re going to start it up.” So I ended up being the news director.
19:49	Nick Beauchesne:	And before she knew it, Terri got promoted.
19:53	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	This guy, this bear of a guy with a big beard and wild and crazy hair, cigarettes hanging out of his mouth named Roman Onufrijchuk, showed up one day at CJSR. And said, “Do you want a job? Would you like to freelance for me?” And I said, “Sure, what are you paying?”
20:17	Nick Beauchesne:	Terri and Jars worked on multiple shows, spending countless hours in the radio studio, which became like a second home.
20:28	Chelsea Miya:	[Sound Effect: Audio Crackling] Today’s podcasts can be recorded anywhere. The three of us who worked on this SpokenWeb episode live in different parts of the country: Kitchener, Calgary, and Kamloops. We worked on this show remotely, conducting interviews from home on Zoom. But in the past, campus radio was very much rooted in a specific sense of place. Jennifer Waits is a campus radio historian and a producer of the Radio Survivor podcast. Like Jars and Terri, Jennifer worked on a campus radio station in the early 80s. Only in her case, she was based at Haverford College outside Philadelphia. Her radio program had a smaller following than CKUA. It only aired during lunch-hour in the cafeteria hall. But she still remembers how excited she was, hearing her shows broadcast over the school speakers…
21:18	Audio Recording, Jennifer Waits, Interview, [3 Feb 2022]:	So I did college radio starting when I was a freshman in college and didn’t really pay any attention to college radio history at the time. But I think what happened was I must have come back to a reunion at some point and had heard sad tales about the radio station falling on hard times… like somebody sold off a bunch of the record collection that I remember being a part of lovingly kind of restoring service from major record labels when I was there in the 80s. And, and so I had this sadness about pieces of the history getting sold off and I think it’s at that point that I got really interested in digging into the history of the radio station. So I kind of embarked on this project and interviewed people from Haverford College’s radio past going as far as the 1940s.
22:07	Chelsea Miya:	Since then, Jennifer made it her quest to celebrate and preserve campus radio culture. She’s visited hundreds of stations across America, documenting their different stories. As Jennifer explains, the campus radio studio is a sacred space. It has its own distinct aura.
22:25	Audio Recording, Jennifer Waits, Interview, [3 Feb 2022]:	[Start Music: Ambient Electronic] There’s often a community feeling at a college radio station, so you might have a couch that’s been there forever. Sometimes I’ve been warned to not sit on a particular couch because of nefarious things that might have happened on said couch. Often you’ve got layers of history on the walls of radio stations, so you might have stickers from bands and from other radio stations, you might have flyers from concerts that have happened or you know, material that has been sent in with records. So promotional items like glossy photos of bands and posters. So you’ll see stuff all over the walls, you’ll often see cabinets that have stickers all over them. What I love are just sort of funky pop culture artifacts. [Laughs] So there might be a troll doll in the record library or a lava lamp. I’ve seen skulls at a lot of radio stations, I don’t really know why. [End Music: Ambient Electronic]
23:21	Chelsea Miya:	Like Jennifer, Jars and Terri also spent a lot of time in their campus radio studio. And as they explained, the studio space became part of university lore.
23:31	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	Did Jars tell you physically where we were located? The Department of Radio and Television was two floors below ground in the basement of the biological sciences building.
23:40	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	WeIl it was a special place come to think of it because it was in the bowels of the biological sciences building and literally in the bowels, not in the basement, but in the second basement or sub basement. [Laughter] So you went right down to the bottom. And I mean, the building itself is this gargantuan building and you know, as all these biological specimens and in display cases on different floors.
24:06	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	It was a warren. It was a rabbit’s warren of offices in this nether world. [Sound Effect: Cages Rattle] We once found a boa constrictor that had escaped. Because up above us was all sorts of science labs and buildings and rabbits and cockroaches and we had so much wildlife [Sound Effect: Animal Noises] two floors below ground.
24:32	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:	People didn’t know about it. You would really have to know where – people were shocked when they learned about it. When we’d tell ’em to come and I’d have to have a map to explain to them how to get to the studios.
24:43	Nick Beauchesne:	We asked Terri to elaborate on her duties as the resident tech guru and production assistant.
24:49	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	Jars, I think, would edit the programs and he designed them, but my job was to put them together. We had a Uher tape recorder which was rarely used–it was a small, portable recorder. We had a Nagra which is a Swiss built small recorder that took small reels, but it was portable so we could take that out into the field. And I have a really strong memory of going in the dead of winter with my arm in a cast and this heavy tape recorder trudging through the snow from the Biological Sciences building to the Humanities to interview Rudy Wieb and it took me forever to get there and get my parka off and get the reels done. Poor Rudy. But he was such a prince, such a king of a man, you know, he gave me this fantastic interview. And then he helped me pack up and he even zipped me up because I couldn’t zip myself up with my hand. That tape recorder provided the best recording. Then we had two Ampex decks, reel-to-reel decks. The Ampex were used for editing, so we would listen to the interview first once across, make our notes, and then begin editing out what we didn’t want. We would cut on the diagonal, a little metal bar, it had a slot in it for the tape and a sliced whole. And we would use clear splicing tape to put the ends together. [Sound Effect: Stretching Tape, Cutting Tape] And tape them across. And then we had two Revox reel-to-reel players that handled the large ten-inch reels, and we used them for mastering. So once we had our show complete and edited, we would record the master tape from one deck to the other. The problem with the Revoxes were they had light-sensitive heads. So, if a splice was not very well done and you had a gap and the light came through and hit the head that was playing back, the playback head, it would stop, but only the take up reel would stop, not the letting-down reel. So you get this dump of tape. You just sit and babysit those.
27:40	Nick Beauchesne:	Today, podcast producers have access to online sound libraries with countless sound effects available at the click of a mouse. But in the heyday of alternative radio, sound design was done by hand. Campus radio producers like Jars and Terri would have to create sound effects themselves in the studio or track down physical recordings and transfer them from a record onto reel-to-reel tapes. The magnetic tape could then be sliced by hand into samples and remixed. We asked Jars and Terry about the eclectic musical stings and sound effects samples used in “Voiceprint”, “Celebrations”, and “Paper Tygers”.
28:20	Archival audio, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	[Electronic sound effects]
28:26	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, 4 Jan 2022]:	The sounds we used for the different subheadings of the show, were a collective effort. Some of them were my ideas. I’d go looking for something that I thought would work well there. Roman Onofrijchuk was very good, I think Terri helped out. We decided early on with “Voiceprint” [Music: Funky Electronic Reverberation] it was a funky, technical thing that we were doing to go with the sound effects for that. “Celebrations” was just my choice. I thought, well, okay, so it’s called Celebrations.
28:49	Archival audio, “Celebrations” Intro Music, 1983:	[Trumpet Fanfare]
28:50	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:	A fanfare was perfect, that brassy upbeat. I was a member of the Edmonton public library and you could take out records and so I took a whole bunch of classical records that I thought I might find something on and found that particular fanfare which is identified at the end of the show. It was a combination of talents, I guess, that came in to contribute towards it.
29:24	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	We listened to different programming on BBC and NPR. We had a library of albums [Sound: Flipping Through Tapes] at radio and TV and of course I had I sort of had access to the stuff over at CJSR, as well. We had things like tubular bells [Bells Chime]. For “Sacred Circle”, I think we had a lot of really mystical and choral music [Choral Singing].
29:54	Nick Beauchesne:	[Choral Singing Continues] “Sacred Circle”, by the way, is another UAlberta radio show that Terri worked on. But that is a story for another podcast episode, another paper.
30:04	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	And something would come up from the stuff that was being done at Convocation Hall because, although often they performed –my favourites were the old classics they also performed new music. And new music is very exciting because it could be atonal, [Music: Atonal Sounds] it can be twelve-tone. [Music: Twelve-Tone Sounds] We had a few sound effects albums because now you can get anything you want from the internet. But we actually had a couple of records where you that you could queue up. We got a lot of that. We nearly wore those sound effects albums out using them for every kind of sound we needed. [Music Fades]
30:55	Nick Beauchesne:	These sound effects tapes are probably still gathering dust in the University of Alberta archives. The library’s inventory includes cassettes from 1979, with labels like “English meadow, night in the country,” “ultimate thunderstorm,” and “shell and gun fire.” The experimental sound design of late 1970s campus radio programs also coincides with the rise of the Canadian avant-garde sound poetry scene. The literary guests that Jars invited on air brought their own unique flavours to the show. For instance, as part of the “Celebrations” series, Jars interviewed poets Stephen Scobie and Douglas Barbour. At the time, Scobie and Barbour were both professors in the English Department. They performed poetry on campus under the shared stage name “Re:Sounding.” And their live shows had quite the reputation. A reviewer for The Gateway student paper describes Scobie and Barbour’s spoken word shows as “unforgettable madness.” The following is my dramatic re-enactment of the performance review:
32:06	Audio Recording, Re-enactmnet of The Gateway	[Sound Effect: Typewriter Clacking] These two English professors think and act primal barbarism (pun intended)… I looked out accompanied by the sound of explosive static in the speakers to find Barbour hopping from one box to another repeatedly yelling something like “B-Bible dible-u,” while Scobie made a long spitting hiss into the microphone… this atavism went on for ten minutes. I was amazed at their vocal stamina… a crude finale to what had been for the most part a tasteful evening.
32:38	Nick Beauchesne:	[Sound Effect: Recording Buzz] Here’s a clip from their performance of their poem “What the One Voice” recorded live-in-studio for the “Celebrations” program in 1985.
32:50	Archival audio, “What the One Voice,” Stephen Scobie and Douglas Barbour, Re:Sounding, 1983:	[Overlapping Voices] What the one voice affirms the other denies. What the one voice conceals, the other displays. When the one voice says yes the other says no. When the one voice is silent, the other voice cries. What the one voice believes, the other voice doubts. [Repetition, Voices Diverging and Swapping Lines] The voice of the left mind, the voice of the right. The voice of the right mind, the voice of the left. [Repetition, Volume Increasing and Then Dropping to Whispers]
33:58	Nick Beauchesne:	When we first heard this clip, Chelsea, Ariel and I wondered if Jars had attended Barbour’s live poetry reading series, hosted in the English Department. His answer caught us by surprise!
34:10	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [28 Mar 2022]:	I not only watched them perform. I performed at events with them.
34:14	Nick Beauchesne:	Jars had created a collection of sound poems for his thesis project. Scobie and Barbour were his supervisors. Under their tutelage, he rubbed shoulders with the rock stars of the Canadian sound poetry scene. Jars remembers taking the stage with the Four Horsemen, fronted by bpNichol and Steve McCaffery, who were like the Pink Floyd of avant garde poetry. Jars had invited his family to the event.
34:40	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 Mar 2021]:	All these Ukrainians came, my grandmother among them. And I mean they sat there with their jaws on the floor. [Laughs]They thought these people are crazy! Making these sounds and jumping around on stage and everything like that. Sound poetry explores that area between music vocalizations and literature. I’m interested in these gray areas, I guess, which may be the best way to put it.
35:06	Nick Beauchesne:	One of the great achievements of the “Celebrations” series is a very personal touch to discussing individual authors and poets, their works and their lives – especially as more time passes, and more and more of these people are leaving this world. They leave behind a special “voice print” in the form of Jars’s “Celebrations”. The “Re:Sounding” clip hits that much harder, knowing of Douglas Barbour’s passing in 2021, just a few months before this podcast episode was produced. Another clip from the CKUA archive that touched us was a reading of “Stellar Rhyme,” a poem by the great Phyllis Webb, who also passed in the year 2021.
35:52	Archival audio, “Stellar Rhyme,” Phyllis Webb, “Celebrations”, 1983:	[Page Flipping] A ball star, tiny columns and plates falling from very cold air, a quick curve into sky. My surprised winter breath, a snowflake caught midway in your throat.
36:15	Ariel Kroon:	Jars was also a talented interviewer, and he had a special knack for getting the guests on his shows to open up. He explains that he realized early on that being interviewed for a radio show, even a lesser-known campus show with a studio in the biology basement, could be intimidating. Once he placed a microphone in someone’s face and did a sound check, people would freeze up. So, he took a different approach.
36:38	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:	One of the things I learned was how to ease them into the interviews. I would meet them when they came in and help them take off their coat and start chatting with them and stuff. We’d sit down, and I’d click on the microphones. And we’d just keep talking about this, that. You know, their time at the university. General stuff. Get them comfortable talking. And I’d just ask, “So tell me how did you get interested in psycholinguistics?” A light would come on in their heads saying, like, oh wow, the interview has begun! And it made it much more smooth.
37:04	Ariel Kroon:	One of Jars’ most memorable guests was poet Ann Cameron. He interviewed Cameron for an episode of Voiceprint called “Women’s Language and Literature: a Voice and a Room of One’s Own.” Only a few clips made it into the final episode. But the raw interview file is riveting. They talked for almost an hour. We were captivated by her candid discussion of everything from sexism to motherhood to her contempt for the label of “poetess.”
37:32	Archival audio, Jars Balan, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	Do you object to being identified as a woman writer?
37:37	Archival audio, Ann Cameron, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	No, I am a woman, and I am a writer.
37:40	Archival audio, Jars Balan, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	You don’t mind having… I mean there are a lot of people who…
37:43	Archival audio, Ann Cameron, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	I object to being referred to as a “poetess.”
37:46	Archival audio, Jars Balan, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	Mm-hmm
37:47	Archival audio, Ann Cameron, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	Somehow a poet, semantically or whatever, a poet has has dignity and pride and has an ability to use words and move people, and a poetess is hung on a hook of iambic pentameter and nobody bothers [Laughs].
38:12	Archival audio, Jars Balan, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	Well, it’s the ending is a… the suffix is a… has a diminutive, derivative quality to it.
38:21	Archival audio, Ann Cameron, “Voiceprint”, 1981:	It…what does really piss me off is when someone comes up and says, “Oh, I read the thing you wrote. My, you write just like a man!” And I used to choke, just choke! And now, I smile demurely and say, “Oh shit, I hope not!” [Laughs].
38:45	Ariel Kroon:	The campus radio shows in the University of Alberta archive are full of gems like these, from Canadian authors who often engage with Jars on a deeply personal level, sharing stories about their work and their lives. These audio artifacts transport us back to a particular moment in the history of Canadian literature, and also a particular moment in the history of alternative radio.
39:13	Archival audio, “Voiceprint”, 1983:	[Sound Effect: Warning Tone] [Announcer Voice] Warning. The following program candidly examples the subject of pornography, censorship, and linguistic taboos. Listener discretion is advised.
39:23	Archival audio, Jars Balan,“Voiceprint”, 1983:	My name is Jars Balan. And tonight I’ll be exploring the delicate issue of profanity in language and literature. Our guests include several people fascinated by four-letter words, including comedian George Carlin.
39:36	Chelsea Miya:	The final episode of Voiceprint never made it to air. The subject of the episode was “Linguistic Taboos and Censorship”. Ironically, this episode about censorship was what got the show kicked off CKUA. Jars had included a clip from comedian George Carlin’s infamous monologue. You might have heard it. It’s about the “seven words you can’t use in television.”
39:58	Archival Audio, George Carlin, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” 1978:	Archival audio, George Carlin, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” 1978: Bad words! That’s what they told us they were, remember? That’s a bad word! You know: bad words, bad thoughts, bad intentions… and words! You know the seven, don’t you? That you can’t say on television: Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Huh? [Audience Laughter, Applause].
40:26	Chelsea Miya:	For the ACCESS-run CKUA station, remember this is the ACCESS that emphasized “educational programming,” airing the Carlin clip crossed a line. They said Jars had “contravened the station’s policy on obscene language.” The Edmonton Journal criticized CKUA for being “too sensitive” about the whole issue. In the editor’s view, the “program in question was a sober academic discussion.” Jars himself is quoted in the article. And he laments the decision as “truly unfortunate.” “Voiceprint” was, he says, “serious radio” and they’d been “castrated!” Again, Jars’s words, not mine. [Sound Effect: Electronic Beeping]. And so… Voiceprint came to an end. Until, that is, it was rediscovered, four decades later, by the SpokenWeb research team. [Boxes Opening] With a little help from Jars..
41:22	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:	Well I think I got about two bankers boxes’ worth of stuff. Because I’ve got stuff in the shed and I’ve got stuff here. So, I could bring this to campus. [Tape Recording Starting]
41:32	Ariel Kroon:	Jars gave us additional recordings of “Voiceprint”, and folders upon folders of handwritten production notes. Sifting through this material, we were amazed at the sheer amount of work each participant put into producing these shows, often without knowing who (if anyone) would be listening. Nowadays, the lived reality of campus radio from 40 years ago seems so foreign to those of us working on podcasts. For example, we are able to access listener metrics with the click of a mouse through podcasting hosting platforms, and insert audio very easily without having to cut up the physical recording media.
42:09	Audio Recording, Stacey Copeland, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:	We often hear [Laughs] all the different terms like “knowledge mobilization,” getting thrown around as really important. Well, what does that actually look like? If we’re thinking about those kinds of aspects of projects being important, we need to start seriously thinking about how we can change our research into more publicly accessible work.
42:29	Ariel Kroon:	This is Stacey Copeland, one of the producers of the Amplify Podcast Network. One of the Amplify Podcast Network’s goals is to have podcasting recognized by academic institutes as legitimate scholarly work.
42:43	Audio Recording, Stacey Copeland, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:	What Amplify is interested in doing is not only bringing scholarly podcasts to light, but thinking about how to make them count as scholarship in more formal ways as well through peer review. So, thinking about the podcast equivalent to a manuscript.
43:01	Ariel Kroon:	[Sound Effect: Printing Press Mechanizations] The printed journal or book has long been held up as the gold standard of academic research, how a scholar measured the impact of their research. But these traditional forms of scholarly production can be alienating. As academics, we’re removed from the process of “making knowledge” in a material, hands-on way. Much like Jars and Terri did with campus radio shows like “Celebrations” and “Voiceprint”, today scholars are using podcasting to reconnect with their research and, at the same time, find an audience outside of academia.
43:35	Audio Recording, Stacey Copeland, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:	For me it often means learning how to better articulate my research, in general. If you can’t talk about your research with your grandma [Laughs] then you really need to start rethinking what your scholarship’s bringing to the world and what it’s actually contributing beyond your specific discipline. And, when you start to engage in something like making a podcast, it brings up a lot of those bigger conversations and bigger questions.
44:03	Ariel Kroon:	In addition to her work with the Amplify Podcast Network, Stacey researches the history of queer and feminist radio. She points out how campus and community radio in the 70s and 80s pushed back against the mainstream. In this sense, shows like Voiceprint paved the way for podcasts, as a more experimental alternative to major public and commercial broadcasters.
44:25	Audio Recording, Stacey Copeland, Interview, [2 Feb 2022]:	When we’re looking at pre-Internet era, community radio and campus radio in particular played a huge role in creating any sort of space for community and any sort of political discussion that didn’t fit CBC or private commercial radio. So, spaces to have those more local-oriented conversations and also conversations around queer act activism, around racial activism, and politics and movements across different decades in Canada that just didn’t get the airtime on, say, a CBC. And when the Internet didn’t exist, these were the only spaces we could have those conversations.
45:06	Nick Beauchesne:	[Start Music: Ambient Music] Jars did not win his battle with ACCESS, and “Voiceprint” was ultimately banned. But he has no regrets. As Jars himself put it, the show “concluded with an exclamation point, which wasn’t necessarily a bad way to go out.” Through ups and downs, highs and lows, Jars still cherishes the memories of his time as a campus radio host. [End Music: Ambient Music]
45:30	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:	Radio is no longer the same thing that it was when these shows were produced. When I think back on the way we edited with a razor blade and tape to do the splicing and how now all of that just done with dials, digitally and you don’t have a tape even is a world of difference. And I enjoyed the tactile thing of of doing the cuts. And I got good at it.
45:54	Nick Beauchesne:	For Jars, campus radio is a chance for academics to connect with the public in a meaningful way, to lend voice to larger social and political conversations which affect us all.
46:06	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [4 Jan 2022]:	One of the things that’s changed about the university is that in an attempt to combat this image of being an ivory tower, academics now realize it’s important to reach out into a wider audience. That if society is going to support universities financially, morally, politically, they need to be able to show the worth of the learning that goes on at the university. And so sharing that knowledge, sharing that experience is very important. And I think more scholars realize that.
46:35	Nick Beauchesne:	After graduating from UAlberta, Jars continued to write and perform sound poetry. He also went on to teach remote learning courses in Australia. This was before the internet, so Jars would record his lectures on tape, and those tapes would then be mailed to students. To his surprise, being a distance educator was a lot like being a radio host.
46:59	Audio Recording, Jars Balan, Interview, [24 May 2021]:	The fact that I had to record these in a studio and sit for three hours, they are three-hour lectures, it really helped the fact that I was used to sitting in front of a microphone in a studio [Sound Effect: Recording Sounds] , and I could hold forth. I just make notes, spread them out on the thing, and talk.
47:15	Nick Beauchesne:	Jars later returned to the University of Alberta where he was hired by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
47:22	Chelsea Miya:	As for Terri, she made the leap from radio to film, devoting her life to telling stories about social justice, women’s rights, and the arts.
47:31	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	After I left radio, I became a documentary filmmaker and I’ve spent my entire career doing that. But I did love radio first and foremost: that was my passion, my heart.
47:43	Chelsea Miya:	We asked Terri if she had any advice for the next generation of aspiring academic podcast.
47:50	Audio Recording, Terri Wynnyk, Interview, [7 Jan 2022]:	[Start Music: “Limoncello” by Kern PKL] Voiceprint was fun! Voiceprint was so rigorous. The first thing I would pass on is: listen to people, and listen with an open mind. Don’t bring your prejudices to what you’re listening to. Listen with an open mind. And I would say, always speak. Always speak your truth. Be respectful when you speak it, but speak so that you can articulate yourself. Speak so that you can make yourself understood. Speak so that you can express your frustrations in a way that are respected, speak so that you’re not just a dumb human being on this planet, but you contribute to the rest of society. [End Music: “Limoncello” by Kern PKL]
49:02	Ariel Kroon:	[Music Starts: “Celebrations” Fanfare] With that, we conclude this brief profile from the campus radio history archives at the University of Alberta. We’d like to thank Arianne Smith-Piquette from CKUA and Marissa Fraser from UAlberta’s Archives and Special Collections. We’d also like to give a special shout out to SpokenWeb Alberta researcher Zachary Morrisson, who worked behind the scenes on this episode. All works cited and contributors can be found in the show notes for this episode. This is myself, Ariel Kroon, on behalf of my colleagues Chelsea Miya, and Nick Beauchesne, bidding you a pleasant good evening. [End Music: “Celebrations” Fanfare]
49:50	Hannah McGregor:	[Start Music: SpokenWeb Theme Music] SpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from (and created using) Canadian Literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are SpokenWeb contributors Ariel Kroon, Nick Beauchesne, and Chelsea Miya of the University of Alberta. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Judith Burr—and next month, this position will be taken over by our new supervising producer, Kate Moffatt. Our episodes are transcribed by Kelly Cubbon. To find out more about Spokenweb visit: spokenweb.ca and subscribe to The Spokenweb Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know! Rate us and leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or say hi on our social media @SpokenWebCanada. Stay tuned to your podcast feed later this month for ShortCuts with Katherine McLeod, mini stories about how literature sounds. [End Music: SpokenWeb Theme Music]

Kate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren

Kate Moffatt is an incoming PhD student in English at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests lie primarily with women’s book history and women’s writing of the Romantic period. She brings a keen interest in the digital humanities, book and literary history, and archives and archival practices to her work as a Research Assistant for SpokenWeb.

Kandice Sharren is a postdoctoral research fellow at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her research focuses on print culture of the Romantic period, and she brings her experience with digital humanities, archival research, and book history to the SpokenWeb project.

Citations

Beverly, Andrea. “Traces of a Feminist Literary Event.” CanLit Across Media, MQUP, 2019, p. 221, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvscxtkg.15.

“Castor Wheel Pivot.” Blue Dot Sessions. Accessed 2 April 2022. https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/100713

“Dust Digger.” Blue Dot Sessions. Accessed 27 March 2022. https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/99584.

“Flipping through a book.” Free Sound. Accessed 2 April 2022. https://freesound.org/people/Zeinel/sounds/483364/

Heavenly choir singing sound, “Ahhh.” Free Sound. Accessed 2 April 2022. https://freesound.org/people/random_intruder/sounds/392172/

“Palms Down.” Blue Dot Sessions. Accessed 15 March 2022. https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/96905

“Record Scratch.” Free Sound. Accessed 2 April 2022. https://freesound.org/people/simkiott/sounds/43404/

Rooney, Frances. “activist; Gloria Greenfield.” Section15, 22 May 1998. Accessed 31 March 2022. http://section15.ca/features/people/1998/05/22/gloria_greenfield/.

SpokenWeb Podcast

S3-Episode 7

‘The archive is messy and so are we’: Decoding the Women and Words Collection

LISTEN

Download

SpokenWeb Podcast

S3-Episode 7

‘The archive is messy and so are we’: Decoding the Women and Words Collection

April 4, 2022

Produced byKate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren

Share

IMAGE GALLERY

Kate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren

Produced by
Kate Moffatt and Kandice Sharren