The Chesterfield

The Chesterfield is a place for conversations about the importance of Canadian culture and why it's essential we tell our own stories. Produced by FRIENDS, the video series features interviews with Canadian artists revealing the Canadian content that shaped their lives, hosted by journalist Ben Rayner and songwriter and performance artist iskwē. New episodes air every Tuesday.

Candy Palmater has always been a fan of rock ‘n’ roll. Growing up in rural New Brunswick, if the comedian and broadcaster wanted to buy a record, she drove to the Sugarloaf Mall in nearby Campbellton and browsed the latest releases. On one of those trips, she discovered a hard rock group from Vancouver called Headpins, led by a former figure skater-turned-powerhouse-rocker named Darby Mills. Headpins dominated the charts in Canada and toured stadiums overseas with bands like KISS, but is often overlooked in discussions of Canadian music history. On this season’s final episode of The Chesterfield, Palmater speaks with iskwē about how the singer, also known as Canada’s “Queen of Scream,” influenced her life as a loud-and-proud Canadian woman in the arts. She also leaves us with a few strong words about the importance of supporting our Canadian culture.

Vancouver’s Art Bergmann was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2020 for his "indelible contributions to the Canadian punk music scene, and for his thought-provoking discourse on social, gender and racial inequalities.” Bergmann has been an icon in the Canadian alternative music scene since the late 1970s, and is known and admired for his anti-establishment stance and socially conscious lyrics. His 1996 album What Fresh Hell Is This? earned him a Juno Award for Best Alternative Rock Album. The provocative singer, songwriter and guitarist told CBC Radio in an interview that he was recently radicalized by shows like As It Happens, especially their coverage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On this week’s episode of The Chesterfield, host Ben Rayner talks to Bergmann about his relationship with the CBC and the importance of public broadcasting for all Canadians.

Singer Bif Naked was a punk rocker living in Vancouver in the 1990s when she first became a fan of Toronto hip-hop duo Dream Warriors. Their track "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style” used a Quincy Jones sample well known to many Canadians as the theme music for the game show Definition — or, in Bif’s case, could be found in her parents’ record collection. How did this song find its way across the country in an era when Canadian hip-hop was not played much on the radio? Bif joins iskwē on The Chesterfield this week to talk about Canadian music videos and the golden age of MuchMusic, our nation’s music station.

“This episode is for the Atlantic Canadians,” says our New Brunswick-born host Ben Rayner of his interview with actor and TV personality Jonathan Torrens (of Jonovision and Trailer Park Boys fame) on this week’s episode of The Chesterfield. The two dive into the madcap sketch comedy show CODCO, which introduced national treasures like Cathy Jones and I Am CanCon ambassador Mary Walsh to CBC audiences in the late ‘80s. The show also set the stage for the award-winning comedy series This Hour Has 22 Minutes. More importantly, as fellow Atlantic Canadian Torrens points out, the show was “of Newfoundlanders, by Newfoundlanders, for Newfoundlanders.” When it comes to telling our own stories, in our voices, CODCO was as good as it gets.

Gurdeep Pandher moved to Canada from India in 2006. The writer, poet and dancer travelled and lived all across the country, from Quebec to BC, before settling down in Whitehorse. Today, he is best known best as Gurdeep Pandher of the Yukon whose joyful videos of him Bhangra dancing amidst the beautiful landscapes of the North have delighted viewers around the world. For his interview on The Chesterfield, Pandher chose to pay tribute to Rupi Kaur, a fellow Punjabi-Sikh immigrant to Canada. Kaur first found success on Instagram where she shared her poetry in visual form. At 21, Kaur wrote, illustrated, and self-published her first collection, milk and honey, which went on to sell over 3 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on The New York Times Best Seller list. Pandher joins iskwē for a conversation about Kaur’s poetry and the importance of supporting immigrant voices in Canadian culture.

When it comes to Canadians who have shaped global culture, there are few peers to Marshall McLuhan. The visionary writer coined the phrases “global village” and “the medium is the message” in the 1960s, when he also pretty much predicted the arrival of the world wide web. Esteemed television and stage actor R.H. Thomson has long studied McLuhan’s ideas, and has even played him in the Tarragon Theatre play The Message. On this week’s episode of The Chesterfield, Thomson sits with our host Ben Rayner to explore the relevance of McLuhan’s work in the digital age, and to ring the alarm about Facebook and Google as the contemporary colonizers of public space that need to be resisted.

Canada’s singer-songwriters have always been amongst the best in the world. Since the 1960s, artists like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Gordon Lightfoot have written authentically about life from a uniquely Canadian perspective, and influenced generations around the world. Dan Hill was right there with them. The Grammy and Juno Award-winning singer and songwriter from Toronto joins iskwē on The Chesterfield this week to explore the impact of Neil Young’s 1970 record “Southern Man,” and how the anti-racist track caused the equivalent of a modern-day rap battle.

Growing up in Calgary, Scaachi Koul really wanted to own a House Hippo — a tiny palm-sized hippopotamus she saw advertised on the Canadian specialty channel YTV. But the House Hippo wasn’t real. It was created by Concerned Children's Advertisers to teach kids not to believe everything they see on TV. Today, Scaachi is an author and journalist at BuzzFeed, where she dissects what we see and read. She joins Ben Rayner as our guest on The Chesterfield this week to discuss this unusual piece of Canadian Content, and how fake news has made media literacy more important than ever.

Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, the late John Candy. The fact that these comedians all come from Canada is something to be proud of. That they all came up from the same Canadian TV show before launching international careers is a reminder of the importance of telling our own stories and supporting the broadcasters who reflect ourselves back to us onscreen and online. To kick off a new season of interviews on The Chesterfield, we’ve got improv legend, actor and award-winning comedy writer Colin Mochrie speaking with our host iskwē on the genius and legacy of SCTV. The sketch comedy show from the 70s and 80s with the A-list cast was as distinctly Canadian as you can get, and is the perfect place to start a new series of conversations about Canadian culture.

FRIENDS is proud to announce The Chesterfield, a place for conversations about Canadian culture. This new weekly interview series is hosted by journalist Ben Rayner and songwriter and performance artist iskwē. They’ll be video chatting with Canadian creators from their homes across the country about great Canadian content that inspires them. You can meet Ben and iskwē in the official Chesterfield trailer:

For most Canadians, Christmas concerts are cancelled this season. And it’s still anyone’s guess when live music will return to the stage. But that doesn’t mean we have to have silent nights. It might just be the perfect time to throw on a favourite live album and relive a great concert from the past. In the final episode of this season of The Chesterfield, Chris Murphy of Sloan talks to Ben Rayner about Exit, Stage Left, the 1981 double live album from Canadian rock legends Rush. Chris reveals the many ways in which Rush influenced his own career, and discusses how Canadian content regulations are essential for our music to survive.

Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson all have long and impressive credits in film and TV—both at home and around the world. But they will forever be known as Kids in the Hall, the home-grown Canadian comedy troupe that made its debut on CBC in 1985. Stand-up comedian Ali Hassan joins iskwē on The Chesterfield this week to discuss what makes this oddball 90s CBC TV sketch show a cult classic, and why Canadians are so good at being weird.

“We’re good at hockey. We’re good at maple syrup. But we're also good at editorial cartooning.” Michael de Adder is one of the world’s best political cartoonists in the industry right now. He’s also very funny, so this week’s episode of The Chesterfield is a real treat. Michael talks to fellow New Brunswick native Ben Rayner about the great Canadian cartoonist Terry “Aislin” Mosher, why satire is important, and what we should do with Facebook.

In the 1960s, a CBC folk music variety series hosted by a fiddle player from New Brunswick was more popular in Canada than the world famous Ed Sullivan Show. Don Messer’s Jubilee brought artists like Anne Murray and Stompin’ Tom to a national audience, and led to the equally beloved spin off series Singalong Jubilee. PEI singer-songwriter Catherine MacLellan has a special connection to the Jubilee shows – they helped launch the career of her late father Gene MacLellan. On this week’s episode of The Chesterfield, Catherine speaks to iskwē about the East Coast music family and CBC’s golden era of music variety TV.

Many Canadians known Jeff Lemire for his graphic novel The Secret Path, a collaboration with Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie which illustrated the tragic story of Chanie Wenjack. Comic book readers also know his prolific work for the biggest names in the field, including Marvel and DC Comics. On this week’s episode of The Chesterfield, Jeff talks to Ben Rayner about one of his favourite books: It’s a Good Life if you Don’t Weaken by fellow Southern Ontario cartoonist Seth.

In this episode of The Chesterfield, hip hop dancer and DJ Diana Reyes chats with iskwē about a moment in 1989 when a rapper from her own Toronto neighbourhood released a smash hit that changed everything. In 2020, Canadian hip-hop artists top the charts all around the world. But that wasn’t always the case. Back in the 1980s, this music wasn't nearly as accepted by mainstream music fans in this country. Reyes discusses “Let Your Backbone Slide” by Maestro Fresh-Wes, a groundbreaking rap track that was “the symbol it was possible to be successful coming where we were from.”

Ben Rayner, co-host of The Chesterfield, admits that this week’s episode touches on two things close to his heart: rock ‘n’ roll and newspapers. Max Kerman of Hamilton’s Arkells knows plenty about both. The frontman of one of Canada’s biggest rock bands joins Ben to celebrate an essential Canadian album: Shine a Light by Constantines, an electrifying indie rock group that had a great influence on him and a generation of Canadian musicians. Max also discusses his band’s campaign to encourage their fans to subscribe to their local newspapers.

Here’s a true story from behind the scenes of The Chesterfield: when we asked Winnipeg author David A. Robertson to choose a piece of influential Canadian art for his interview, he picked the album acākosīk, by iskwē — without realizing that iskwē was actually a host on the show. After we all had a good laugh about that, he suggested we explore The Marrow Thieves, a dystopian Indigenous survival novel for young adults by Cherie Dimaline. Both David and Cherie won a Governor General’s Award for literature in 2017 for their work for young readers. Both are also leading figures amongst contemporary Indigenous storytellers. On the latest episode of The Chesterfield, David and iskwē discuss why The Marrow Thieves is essential reading, and how Indigenous representation is vital for the next generation of Canadian readers.

It only ran for one season in 1971, but the children’s TV show Hilarious House of Frightenstein has endured as a uniquely odd Canadian cult classic. Created by producer Riff Markowitz and starring comedian Billy Van as a whole cast of ghoulish characters including a vampire count, a werewolf disc jockey and witch chef, the show opened (or perhaps warped) the minds of its young viewers — including George Stroumboulopoulos. In the spirit of Halloween week, the latest episode of The Chesterfield features the Canadian radio and TV host in conversation with fellow Frightenstein enthusiast Ben Rayner, exploring this wild era in Canadian television and the power of waving your freak flag high.

She’s been called the “mother of Indigenous cinema.” Alanis Obomsawin has made more than 50 documentaries that tell essential stories from Canada’s Indigenous communities, including the award-winning 1993 film Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance. Just last week, the 88-year-old documentarian was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize for her lifetime contribution to the arts. Obomsawin is most associated with her work for the National Film Board, and was working at the NFB in the 1960s when it established the Indian Film Crew, a ground-breaking all-Indigenous training and production initiative. In the latest episode of The Chesterfield, she honours the first film by the Indian Film Crew, Willie Dunn’s 1968 short The Ballad of Crowfoot, and talks to iskwē about the evolution of Indigenous storytelling in Canada.

Fred Penner has toured Canada from coast to coast to coast for more than four decades, entertaining children of all ages with his original music. But there’s one edge of the country that has especially inspired him. In the new episode of our interview series The Chesterfield, the Winnipeg-born performer talks to Ben Rayner about one of his favourite Canadian artworks, a print of Cape Spear, Newfoundland by David Blackwood. He also has a few things to say for fans of his dearly missed kids’ show Fred Penner’s Place about the lasting legacy of that CBC-TV classic.

Jann Arden grew up in Springbank, Alberta, a rural community far from the nightclub scenes of Montreal. But as a young aspiring singer and songwriter in the 70s, she felt a connection with the unlikely disco hit "From New York To L.A." Performed by bilingual Acadian singer Patsy Gallant, the smash track led Gallant to star in her own variety show on CTV. For teenage Jann, seeing a Canadian woman achieve international stardom at a time when few Canadian musicians broke out of the country gave her confidence to pursue her own dreams. For the premiere episode of our new interview series The Chesterfield, Jann video chats with iskwē from a writer's cabin in BC about one of her favourite songs and the power of having our own Canadian success stories.