(The above video has nothing to do with this post. It’s a year old, but it’s Dave Bronstetter being Dave Bronstetter)
If you missed it when it aired, Dave Bronstetter’s goodbye from CBC radio has been (mostly) posted online on the All in a Weekend website. It’s broken up into half-hour blocks (though most of the audio segments are less than 20 minutes in length because news was cut out):
The show was appropriate for a goodbye to such an important part of CBC Montreal’s history. The three hours were completely devoted to Bronstetter, with guests that included also-retiring Katie Malloch, Melissa Kent, Nancy Wood, Brendan Kelly, Yvon Huneault, Maura Keeley, Shawn Lyons, Bernard St-Laurent, Jonathan Goldstein, Tom Harrington, Rick Cluff, Frank McCormick, Laurent Lavigne and Dave’s daughter Fiona.
But the show was plagued by technical problems so bad that the entire first half-hour block never made it to air. Instead, listeners who tuned in to hear the heavily-hyped show heard what can only be described as filler music from the time the national newscast ended at 6:10 until the problem was fixed at 6:31am. When the show did resume, there were further technical problems, and just about every recorded segment they wanted to play didn’t cue.
Still, for Bronstetter fans, it was a chance to say goodbye to a man who had disappeared from the air for reasons that weren’t made clear at first. The show included taped calls from listeners, plenty of trips down memory lane, and even a song by singer-songwriter Connie Kaldor (it’s near the end of the last half-hour).
The recording on CBC’s website cuts off the most important part: Bronstetter’s last words. The final goodbye was unfortunately brief because they were coming up to the top of the hour (host Sonali Karnick tried and failed to get in a brief end-of-show message before the network cut her off in the middle of a word).
Thankfully, my laptop was recording the show, so if you missed Dave’s final message, you can listen to it here.
The All in a Weekend website also has a few photos from Bronstetter’s final show.
There wasn’t much reaction to Bronstetter’s goodbye online, but there was a blog post from Brendan Kelly and another at The SWLing Post. As It Happens (starts at 21:21) gave him a quick nod, replaying Kaldor’s song.
Bronstetter also did interviews for CBC Montreal’s TV newscast, Daybreak in Montreal and Quebec AM in Quebec City.
When asked during the final show what he planned to do during retirement, Bronstetter was noncommittal, suggesting maybe some voiceover work. But the usual retirement things like fishing have never been quite his thing.
