Oh lucky man!

It seems like I’ve been writing this post for months – which I have, but now I’m going to settle down and finish it! It’s true – I’m very lazy, so I’ll just add some stuff to the front of a post I never finished from last fall (at least the one from last fall had nice pictures)

It’s been quite a year, with me starting out settling down into being retired only to have that blow up in March when the Saskatchewan Government announced it was going to shut down SCN where I worked for 20 years before I retired in April of ‘09. A lot of people were quite annoyed at this idea so the government decided to try to sell the station instead and I got pulled into the Bluepoint Investment corporation by their promises to spend real money every year on Saskatchewan programming produced by the independent production sector if they bought the station.

On June 30th, Bluepoint took over the assets of SCN, and began running the station on behalf of the government, using the old broadcasting licence until the CRTC could deal with our application to transfer it to Bluepoint with some changes in the Conditions of Licence (COL’s). On Thursday, Dec 23rd, the CRTC granted Bluepoint the licence to take over and operate SCN, which is pretty exciting stuff.

I told the Bluepoint folks right from the start that I wasn’t looking for a full time job or a new career and they’ve been very good at respecting this – mostly. Sometimes it’s been very busy but other times it hasn’t.
Better yet, they took my suggestion to make Joanne McDonald the station manager and she’s been doing a fabulous job. Best of all, she keeps coming to my office and sending me home to nap or off to play golf!

I could go on and on about the Bluepoint/SCN stuff, but that starts sounding a lot like work which is not what I had planned for today. Let’s just saying it’s pretty interesting though, becoming a private broadcaster.

I’ve also managed to squeeze in a couple of adventures, including a great trip to Seattle and Vancouver last August. I’d had a very busy spring with the SCN/bluepoint project and was glad to be able to take a little time off in August to go out to the west coast and catch up with friends.

My adventures began in Seattle where I spent a couple of days with an old high school chum who just bought a half share in a brand new custom built 43′ Tartan sailboat. They have some pretty ambitious travel plans for the boat, but right now they are just getting used to it, so we got to play for a day on Puget sound. They also introduced me to a lovely Japanese garden on what I believe is the grounds of the University of Washington.

And then it was off to Vancouver where I got to visit with lots of friends and enjoy some fabulous weather. My adventures really started with a trip to the top of Mount Seymour to try to see some Perseid meteors on what was supposed to be the peak night for the meteor shower – we did see some some but we weren’t overwhelmed. Then it was off to the Burnaby Blues and Roots festival where they had a fabulous line-up including Taj Mahol, Little Miss Higgins and Serena Ryder

I did a whole bunch of other cool stuff on that trip and have lots of pictures, but if I try to put everything in I’ll never get this finished so you’ll have to take my word for it or go to my flikr page (Richard in Regina :http://www.flickr.com/) to see more.

I also got to spend time and play golf with friends around the province this year, and with my limited Bluepoint schedule I was even able to spend some time driving out in the country. That’s where the Oh Lucky man part comes from, because I realize this is a great place to be and I have been very fortunate in how things have worked out so far, or maybe it’s just that I figure any day I wake up is already a pretty good day.

2010 has been a pretty interesting year, and I expect 2011 to be more of the same.