Discerning Toronto radio listeners know that the choice 8 o'clock Sunday evening spot is CKLN FM 88.1. That's the home of The Long Note, Colm O'Brien's inventive hour of music in the Celtic tradition. Now in its 22nd year, The Long Note is a rare bird indeed, a programme that answers only to the host's sense of musical integrity and has ploughed a sometimes lonely furrow since its inception in 1986.

Colm O'Brien, the host and creator of The Long Note, manages to be both highly social and very private. What follows, will lift the veil a bit --- but only a bit.

Early Days

I first met Colm 45 years ago in a lecture hall on the old Earlsfort Terrace university campus, just off St. Stephen's Green in Dublin. As we were both first-year students with a History major in common, it would be uplifting to say that a passion for historical exposition was what brought us together. But alas, it would not be true. Instead, the magnet was a current copy of the New Musical Express, a weekly publication that provided an up-to-date chronicle of the latest comings and goings on the Hit Parade. Colm was a Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley man whereas my partisan commitment was to Cliff Richard and the Shadows. As relative fortunes ebbed and flowed, there was much grist for the mill.

Of course, Colm's story goes back further than October, 1962. He was born in County Cavan on March 24th, 1944, the first of seven children for Andy and Mollie O'Brien (nee Donohoe). For his first eight years, the family lived with his maternal grandmother in Edenticlare, about three miles outside Cavan town. After they moved to Crubany in 1952, Colm often spent weekends back with his grandmother. There was an exchange of value between the generations. Her eyesight was failing so he read to her from the local newspaper, The Anglo-Celt. In return, she introduced him to the delights of listening to the radio.

Colm's father was a teacher, the principal of the local national school and active in both the GAA and politics. His mother also had a GAA pedigree, having played camogie for the county team. They shared a love of the theatre, a passion manifested in a lifelong involvement with the local dramatic society and the Cavan Drama Festival.

The Ireland into which Colm was born was a very different place from today's Celtic Tiger. Still overwhelmingly rural, it was an economically stringent society beset by wartime travel restrictions and generally limited prospects. On the positive side though, Cavan football was in its heyday with two All-Ireland titles under the county's belt and three more to come over the next several years. Times have indeed changed!

National school was followed by St. Patrick's College and then on to University College Dublin in 1962. Graduating with a B.A. in 1965, Colm stayed on for another year to add teaching qualifications via a Higher Diploma (or H. Dip. as it was colloquially known). From there, he headed to Toronto in July, 1966, joining me on Kendal Avenue.

It was not an upmarket digs, comprising no more than a single second-floor room and kitchen plus the right to share a bathroom with the house's other tenants. Winter heating arrangements had an element of flexibility. Perhaps the landlord believed the relevant laws were advisory in nature or perhaps he just felt we needed to be toughened up. No matter, there was someplace to sleep, it was dry and we had a portable stereo with a dodgy connection in one speaker.

Toronto was a different place in 1966. While there was an active Irish community, there was no Setanta Sport to bring in telecasts of the Sunday games during the GAA season and no regular radio programming targeted to the expatriate Irish. The late Ray Sonin's weekly Calling All Britons on CFRB did provide the odd Irish reference and the latest English soccer results, so dedicated followers of Manchester United could keep in touch. And we felt truly spoiled when the CBC picked-up the live telecast of the World Cup final. But other than that, isolation from roots was a real thing.

Still, Toronto had an awful lot going for it. Compared to Ireland, jobs were plentiful, wages and salaries were high and taxes were low. And people were friendly and polite. Granted, winter was a different beast from what one had grown up with, but there was invariably a real summer to compensate. All told, it was a good deal.

For Colm, the first job at Crown Life was a temporary distraction from his teaching vocation, but after the first year he switched back. He also married Betty Hyland, from Cavan, on July 1st, 1967 and moved out of Kendal Avenue. Over the next decade, they had two daughters, both of whom were born in Ireland. The eldest, Emer, arrived during an attempted relocation back home in the early 70s. But underlying economic conditions in Ireland were still poor, so the now expanded family returned to Toronto in the late summer of 1974. Then Betty went home expressly for Maeve's birth in 1977.