A tape recorder and microphone became a new novelty in our family. Dad and my grandfather Poppy both loved gadgets, so one of them must have picked it up downtown.

One night, after the dinner dishes had been cleared off, all the grown-ups stood around the dining room table taking turns reciting news articles out of the Times-Colonist. There was an excitement in making your own recording! Dad had been an engineer for radio and TV stations, had heard lots of announcers and deejays, and had brought home bootleg recordings of country novelty tunes on cassette before. My Mum had performed for microphones before too, as a singer in her youth. There was just something about recording your own voice through a microphone…

One night, Dad recorded a performance by Roger Whittaker off the television. In an impressive and moving folk-pop medley, Roger whistled better than a songbird, and sang sadly about leaving old Durham town.

Years later when I was in my teens, I’d occasionally listen to that same tape on my Walkman, staring at my Dad’s handwriting on the label, and remembering Poppy’s face, my sister’s curious smile, and Mum and Dad tapping their toes and hands to keep time. The recording was a window into a rare shared family evening of music and joy…

We lost all our family cassette recordings over the intervening years, and with them I lost the memories of my grandfather’s voice, and my folks reading out the news of the day. It was another little lost treasure of a moment…

Thanks to an infinite number of YouTube fans and the Internet, here is that very Roger Whittaker performance that we watched on the CBC: