If you were to ask me to recollect the meaning of a "long dash following ten seconds of silence," I would be forced to admit to at least two phrasal connotations:
(i) An uncomfortable memory of a narrow escape from a third-grade spelling bee; and
(ii) The NRC's time signal, which is 75 years young today.
Heard every day on CBC radio, that annoying beeeeeep at end of ten seconds of dead air is the official signal that lunch is over in Toronto, lunch is just beginning in Winnipeg, and it's time to get to yoga in Vancouver. In more technical terms, it denotes exactly on-the-hour time across Canada.
Three-quarters of a century is a long time to be dashing it out every day, but hey, that 45-second program has become Canada's longest-running radio broadcast. And that's a far longer run than my own schoolroom breakaway from the horrors of spelling interrogation. To this day I wonder, is it ukulele or ukelele?
(i) An uncomfortable memory of a narrow escape from a third-grade spelling bee; and
(ii) The NRC's time signal, which is 75 years young today.
Heard every day on CBC radio, that annoying beeeeeep at end of ten seconds of dead air is the official signal that lunch is over in Toronto, lunch is just beginning in Winnipeg, and it's time to get to yoga in Vancouver. In more technical terms, it denotes exactly on-the-hour time across Canada.
Three-quarters of a century is a long time to be dashing it out every day, but hey, that 45-second program has become Canada's longest-running radio broadcast. And that's a far longer run than my own schoolroom breakaway from the horrors of spelling interrogation. To this day I wonder, is it ukulele or ukelele?
