GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

5. In 1958 TV arrives...Sport leaves

"The supper hour" was already the only time families regularly spent together. In the mid-'50s, however, if TV was allowed in the eating area they ate in silence, staring at it. As a guest, all I heard was whispers: "Pass the salt" or "What's for dessert?" When the set was in another room, often at least one family member took a plate away from the table to watch alone. My parents noted that while behind the Iron Curtain communist occupiers broke up families by imposing regulations, people in 'the West' were doing it voluntarily because of TV.

There were arguments about homework and bedtimes. There also were sales of more TVs, the invention of frozen TV dinners, collapsible TV tables (in "nests" of two or three), and remote controls. Program listings appeared first in newspapers, later in supplements, finally in a pocketbook-size magazine, TV Guide.

TV turned off some inter-personal communications, refocused others. Conversations during office coffee breaks and lunch hours were about programs the night before. We didn't talk about technology per se, but soon lost interest in long-running radio dramas such as the Procter and Gamble Hour, or Lux Radio Theatre, because Candid Camera was amazing and I Love Lucy was fabulously funny. Few of us stopped to notice that things electronic were taking over our personal time.

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Some of my Tely assignments involved photographers, imaginative men who saw endless "scope for imagination" (as Anne Shirley of Green Gables would say) in cameras. Some talked only about their cameras and the newest attachment. Others developed free lance specialties in portraiture or wildlife, or worked at becoming "two-way men", meaning either writers who illustrated their stories or photographers who provided text with their photos. (Today they're called photojournalists.)

Some eagerly became TV cameramen.

My first photographer partner was Harold Whyte, about 10 years older than I, a thin meticulously dressed man of average height who was very serious about his work. After we had walked together a few times through the Tely's oak and bevelled glass front door at the corner of Bay and Melinda Sts., I learned that the pretty blonde receptionist who worked there and never seemed pleased to see us was his fiancee. Harold and I suddenly stopped being assigned to work together, without explanation.

My next regular photographer was a Dane whose real surname was abbreviated when he became a Canadian citizen. Albert Van was the first Scandinavian I'd ever met, and I remember his extraordinarily clear blue eyes. A bit less than six foot, as wiry, muscular and always alert as an athlete about to sprint, he was almost bald and past the official retirement age of 65. However, because he had no family and no hobby to retire to, he wheedled a contract with the Tely which suited both sides. The love of his life was a four-door Edsel* convertible, cream and salmon pink but I can't recall on which parts.

Van talked about adventures all over the world. The only one I remember was the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906. As a teenage crew member on a freighter docked in the harbour, he was on deck one morning leaning on the railing as the sky began to lighten, looking at the port and the beautiful colonial city beyond it, when he heard a rumbling which grew into a roar and everything in sight shimmered. A man walking on the quay beside the ship began to hop around, shrieking as he looked down and waved his arms, trying to get away from the ground trembling beneath his feet. The extremely strong 'quake lasted less than a minute, Van and his ship were not affected, but San Francisco was devastated by the combination of it and countless fires which followed immediately.

One assignment he and I shared was unforgettable. The first Friday in August began a long weekend, most of Toronto was out of town, it was a no-news day, a "dog day of summer". But then our court reporter told the city editor that a judge had ordered a wire-haired terrier put down. A STORY! HURRAY!!!