Remembering Stuart McLean and Vinyl Café: February 15: Snapshots in History

Many Canadians and Torontonians enjoyed listening to Stuart McLean, a superb storyteller, monologist, author, and humourist, either in person or on CBC Radio, as he shared the lives of Dave, Morley and their family under the guise of the Vinyl Café. On February 15 and beyond, take a moment to remember the person who brought to us stories such as Dave Cooks the Turkey and more recently, The Christmas Card.

Andrew Stuart McLean (born April 19, 1948 in Montréal, Québec; died February 15, 2017) was born to Australian immigrant paren'ts and received his education at Lower Canada College and Sir George Williams University. While he served as a professor at the School of Journalism at Ryerson University for two decades until 2004, it is for McLean’s work on radio with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that he became best known to multitudes of Canadians. Prior to work on the Vinyl Café, Stuart McLean worked on Cross Country Checkup as a researcher and as a guest host on Morningside. McLean also delved into television with the CBC, producing human interest documentaries for The National and The Journal.

The Vinyl Café began in 1994 as a summer series and continued in this manner in 1995 after which the first Vinyl Café book, Stories from the Vinyl Café, was published. The Vinyl Café joined CBC Radio’s regular programming schedule from 1997 onwards, being broadcast every weekend on the radio and available later on in podcast format as well. McLean’s published books from the Vinyl Café led to the thrice-awarding of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. McLean began taking the Vinyl Café concept on tour in 1998 across Canada and the United States.

Following Stuart McLean’s diagnosis with melanoma in November 2015, work ceased on the Vinyl Café, both on radio and on tour. Regrettably, McLean announced on December 13, 2016 that further cancer treatment was required, which would delay the production of new Vinyl Café episodes. Repeats of past Vinyl Café shows stopped airing on CBC Radio One in accordance with Stuart McLean’s wishes to give others an opportunity to share their work on the radio waves. Stuart McLean died just over two months shy of his 69th birthday on February 15, 2017.

Consider these selected Vinyl Café items for borrowing from Toronto Public Library collections: