Flashback: Santa's helpers
Nothing says it better than a letter, especially when Santa writes back
CBC's Flashback newsletter looks inside the CBC archives with inspiration from recent news headlines and what's happening at CBC. Sign up here to get it delivered straight to your inbox.
Safe passage
With an explicit aim to reduce gridlock, Ontario passed a law last month that compels municipalities to ask for permission before they build bike lanes on routes that would require the removal of a car lane, reports CBC News.
Traffic congestion in Toronto was trouble in 1993, too — not for motor vehicles, but for people who chose biking as a way to get around, said a CBC reporter. And she added that riding beside cars, trucks and buses was "potentially unsafe."
She said there were already five kilometres of bike lanes at the time, and that the Toronto Cycling Committee wanted to triple that number. A spokesman for that group said they reached that conclusion by talking to current and potential riders. "What they say most often is, 'I don't feel safe cycling in the city,'" he said.
Hold the phone
Last month, CBC News reported that Rogers Sports & Media has laid off "a few dozen" staff in its audio business. Rogers's audio origins go back to 1927 with the radio station CFRB, according to the Canadian Communications Foundation.
In 1989, the CBC business program Venture looked at the possible turf war for the long-distance market between Rogers and the telephone company Bell. It said Bell and the other members of a Canada-wide consortium of telephone service providers fought to keep their monopoly, but Rogers wanted in.
"We think there's a tremendous future in telecommunications,' said Ted Rogers, president of Rogers. "I'm most anxious to upgrade the cable plant to be a full telecommunications plant, with fibre optics and for high-definition television."
Style points
According to CBC News, some jurisdictions outside Canada have brought in legislation that compels clothing brands to collect and process their goods at the end of their lifespan in a scheme called "extended producer responsibility" (EPR).
Such requirements were not part of the clothing life-cycle back in 1958, when the program CBC Newsmagazine took viewers though the manufacturing process at a factory that produced women's clothing for the Canadian market.
The program also spoke to a merchandise manager who kept tabs on national trends. When a correspondent for Newsmagazine asked him how Toronto fared, fashion-wise, he said: "I'm told that according to national surveys, that Montreal ranks first, Ottawa second, Vancouver third, and Toronto a distant fourth."
Tax tips
Last week the CBC News feature About That explained which goods will be included in the upcoming GST holiday. When the tax came into effect in 1991, bright neon-pink signs attached to store shelves told consumers where the GST applied.
Food fight
A "potato cartel" of four makers of frozen fries is accused of conspiring to inflate prices, CBC News reported last month. U.S. and Canadian firms are said to have engaged in collusion, but a 1980 CBC News story concerned a tense cross-border potato war.
Words of wisdom
Last month a CBC News report explored the topic of people who "still love putting a pen to paper." They'd likely agree with an ad campaign the Crown corporation embarked on more than 25 years ago that said: "Nothing says it better than a letter."
Santa's little helpers
Despite the ongoing Canada Post strike, some workers are making sure Santa Claus still gets kids' letters, CBC News reported Thursday. In 1978, CBC's The National met the Greens, a Manitoba couple who helped the man in the red suit answer his mail.
