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The "Retrontario" Of The East Coast. Meet The Betamax King
I've always admired Ed Conroy, whose Retrontario microsite on YouTube is filled with amazing and otherwise lost pieces of local TV history.
He's actually quoted in the article below about a guy who's been doing similar work on the East Coast, preserving video from old videotapes he scrounges from a host of sources, things that would otherwise be lost to history. Colin Stirling depends on contributions to keep his site going, but it contains some amazing artifacts from TV's past, many from the eastern part of the country, but not all.
Check out this Keith Hampshire version of "Daytime Nighttime" that was used as a promo for CBC in 1988. It's pretty remarkable.
He doesn't expect anyone will go to the trouble he does, but asks you reconsider before dumping those old VHS and Beta tapes lurking in a box in your basement.
""Think twice before you throw it away," implored Stirling. "You might have [something] that doesn't exist anywhere else. I just wish I could instill that necessity to preserve it like any other piece of history, because it's significant. It's no different than archiving World War II relics or Egyptian artifacts."
His site is available here.
Meet the Betamax King: A citizen archivist preserving TV history — one tape at a time
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Re: The "Retrontario" Of The East Coast. Meet The Betamax King
This still pic is taken from the CBC story on Stirling and his mission. I can't help but note the irony of the spelling of the word "colour" on Canada's official broadcaster!
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Thread Starter- MJ Vancouver
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Re: The "Retrontario" Of The East Coast. Meet The Betamax King
There’s also one on the west coast called Retro Vancouver that has gotten a bit of media coverage in the past year. Most of his stuff is from Vancouver but also from Seattle and border station KVOS Bellingham.
But perhaps the oldest one of these YouTube channels for retro local Canadian video is RetroWinnipeg, which has been around since 2006 (when YouTube was only a year old), before even Retrontario came along.
Last edited by MJ Vancouver (June 6, 2024 9:44 pm)