Comings and Goings

singer’ and then I wrote ...‘man is a good guitar player.‘ So after we had finished, the guitar player came back and said: ‘would it be possible for me to make a record sometime’ and he said, ‘I write my own songs'. So I said sure, that’s all the better and I made a date to record him the next week and you know, it was Gene MacLellan. The girl was Lena Welsh and she turned out later to be Stompin’ Tom’s wife. So Gene came in and recorded “Snow Bird”, “Robin On Your Window Sill” and two other songs. Snow Bird has two verses in English and one in French because Gene MacLellan is bilingual. It was just before he became famous with “Snow Bird”.

At that time Bob Large had asked Loman to record the best of these performers for a station talent Library and we used to put these selec- tions in on our program schedules—at least one new performer each hour. We built up a good local library that way and gave the performers some exposure to the public that they normally wouldn’t have had. The recordings were well done. Loman would take great pains with them and there’d be a piano and bass and sometimes a drummer. Because it was local talent it was important. Sometimes I think there is more talent on the Island now and fewer ways for it to express itself. One thing about Bob Large was that he felt that the Manager of a broadcast- ing station should be interested in and have a close hand in the overall direction of the station’s programs which are the end product of the whole effort of running a broadcasting station. In his words, a Manager should not be able to pass the final responsibility off to a Program Director.

The Kent Street office buildings and studios proved a success, although at first it took a lot of persuasion to convince the bank to back Dad, but it was typical of him to take the appropriate risks to put a good idea into action. It was also typical of Dad—to put it mildly—to be haphazard in his day to day accounting methods. But by 1946, business was so good it was apparent to him that he badly needed to hire an accountant, a full time office manager. Which he did, in the form of IT. “Mickey” Place.

Mickey was an Islander by birth, but like many bright young Islanders he was forced to go elsewhere to seek opportunities. Mickey went to New York where he worked as an accountant. When war broke out he came home and enlisted in the Canadian Army. After the war he returned home to PEI with his wife and child. He wanted to settle here but there did not seem to be many opportunities for someone with

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