It seems like a hundred years ago and just yesterday that this season of Midweek began, and now here we are at our final show. Unlike the actual winter this year, this season of Midweek can’t just drag on as long as it wants, so this team went out in style.
Hosts Anne-Marie Iemmolo and Emily Vaz
Lots of other folks in the Carleton University family were doing likewise at this time of year, so Midweek’s Annie Doane opened with a visit to an end-of-year exhibition by upper-year industrial design students, who’d partnered with the Rideau-Rockcliffe community to explore innovative ways to address food insecurity.
Then co-host Emily Vaz spoke with a contract instructor at Carleton about her relief a tentative settlement had been reached in the strike by her CUPE 4600 local — and her frustration that its contract dispute with the university’s administration had ended up going to a strike at the very end of the school year.
The 2023 Bell Canadian Swimming Trials wrapped up just prior to our show, and Midweek reporter Reanna Julien spoke with Devin Heroux of CBC News and Sports about the key stories he sees emerging as the strong Canadian team prepares for the World Championships in Japan this July.
Elite athletes like those Canadian swimmers can rise to the top of their sport only if they’re able to start them in the first place, and then keep going in the face of what for some kids and families can be tough obstacles.
Midweek’s Anne-Marie Iemmolo, this week’s other host, brought us a documentary about Hockey 4 Youth, a nonprofit group aimed at making sure youth of all backgrounds and kinds get a chance to take to the ice.
Ottawa’s mini-Comic Con, clockwise from upper left: Iron Man (aka Nick Laplante, a University of Ottawa student); cosplay wares; the display space; Poison Ivy, Mary Poppins and Captain Carter in search of a plot twist; and, centre, Toronto artist Luanga Nuwame with images he’s created. (Photos by Devon Tredinnick)
With the university’s academic year ending, reporter Devon Tredinnick went out around campus to ask folks how that felt. A couple of people compared it to spring cleaning, but with sweeping away all the accumulated stress of the year, rather than cleaning a room. Another said he was really looking forward to the end of working hard at school because summer means he’ll be … working hard at a job.
Speaking of reality, Midweek’s Cate Newman asked a marriage counsellor to rate the realism of the Netflix reality TV show Love is Blind, where participants get engaged without ever seeing their partner. His verdict: Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener.
On that note, time for some “comic” relief: Devon Tredinnick was back with a documentary visit to the mini-comic con (as in convention) held in Ottawa the weekend before our show. As Devon reported, even a mini event on this theme is far from small, either in its physical space or the passion participants bring to it and to the roles that many cosplay as they attend.
The copy of the script in the hands of executive producer Dave Tait, who was directing the live show as it went to air, said we’d next have a story on the looming merger of the Rogers and Shaw communication companies.
Well, not quite: Host Emily Vaz began reading something completely different, and it turned out to be a story marking this as the final Midweek of Dave’s career.
Dave Tait, Midweek’s executive producer and prof, in the final minutes of his final live show. (Photo by Allan Thompson)
Midweek is produced by senior undergraduate and graduate journalism students at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton, where Dave has taught since 1994. One of his main courses has been Midweek, ever since it took its current form in 1998 as a live current affairs show on CKCU-FM. He’s retiring on June 30, and this was his final class.
Midweek’s Lauren Roulston, with co-conspirators Cate Newman and Dave Sarazin, secretly produced this tribute to Dave that includes voices of several students who’d worked with him over the past decades. (It starts at 31:45 in the show’s Soundcloud file, down below.)
And then it was … SPACE! The Final … story in the show. Reporter Reanna Julien ended our season with an interview about exciting new beginnings, speaking with Manal Siddiqui, a current engineering student at Carleton with dreams for a career in space exploration. They discussed how inspired she was to hear Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen had been picked to be part of the mission to circle the moon, to boldly go where, well, we’ve been before but not for a long time — and what this return to voyaging in space may mean.
And all of that was a fitting end indeed for our Midweek season as its team members head out to start careers and adventures of their own, and Dave heads off for his own new beginning. Engage!