I won’t bother reporting that Google Street View launched in Montreal and other Canadian cities today, since everyone else is already doing that.
But I’ll add this map so you can see what areas are covered (sorry Châteauguay, Vaudreuil-Dorion and St. Bruno, it seems you’ve been left out):
Google Street View coverage map for Montreal
To check it out, we’ll start you off in true Gazette style, at the corner of Peel and Ste. Catherine. Now go and find all those embarrassing or quirky photos hidden in the city.
Back when local television stations produced something beyond their local newscasts, CFCF-12 (as it was known then) had a show called Travel Travel that showed off exotic destinations and plugged hotels that let them stay there for free while filming them. It featured some lovable local TV hosts like Don McGowan and Suzanne Desautels. The show ran for 10 years, from 1987 to 1997.
And now it’s back.
In Calgary.
Ricky Leong, a former Montrealer now living there, pointed out that the show has been added to CFCN’s schedule Sunday mornings at 10:30am.
CTV Calgary programming manager Connie Hempel told Fagstein via email that the “CTV-owned property” would run on the station’s schedule “occasionally”. Questions to her and to CTV’s national programming department about whether running a decades-old travel show (with, in some cases, laughably out of date information) might be a disservice to viewers went unanswered, as did questions about why they’ve chosen that out of all the programming in CTV’s archives to bring back to the air.
Well, at least it provides a bit of nostalgia for Montreal ex-pats living in Calgary, like Leong and Terry DiMonte. I suggested to DiMonte that they also bring back Fighting Back, the consumer rights show he hosted on CFCF during that era. But he wasn’t so sure: “I think I may have a hard time convincing the folks here to watch me fight for folks against Hydro Quebec et amis.”
Better that than hearing about the fantastic views from the observation deck of the World Trade Center in New York (hopefully someone will check the archives to make sure that one isn’t aired).
You’ll recall DiMonte left CHOM FM here in November for a financially secure job at Q107 which pays him (according to the Herald’s sources) a sweet $450,000 a year, guaranteed for five years. (And really, who wouldn’t eat a steaming pile of dog poo for that kind of cash?)
