Dec. 30: The Buckshot show
If you’re a member of Generation X and if you grew up in Calgary,
then you have watched the Buckshot Show. It ran on CFCN-TV from
1967until 1997 and that was a good time to call it quits. The Buckshot
Show could never survive in today’s environment of satellite television.
That is not an indictment of the Buckshot Show; it’s a sad commentary
on our fleeting attention spans and the prevailing zeitgeist that
flashiness is the equivalent of valuable.
Here is Buckshot, an affable Calgary entertainer named Ron Barge who wound up becoming one of the greatest children’s entertainers his country has ever produced. His set looks like a ghost town straight out of the old west. Buckshot is a middle-aged bespectacled man, appropriately decked out in cowboy hat, vest, and sheriff’s badge. It’s not hard to see that the Calgary Stampede – arguably the city’s biggest claim to fame – is the show’s chief inspiration. Buckshot lacks the extreme gentleness of Mister Rogers or the unapologetic zaniness of Mr. Dressup. Even so, he is genuine. He doesn’t talk down to kids and he doesn’t promise them the moon. His show, broadcast over the lunch hour, is a cornucopia of skits, songs, special guests, cartoons and, the show’s trademark, having Benny the Bear, a puppet, read birthdays out of the Birthday Book. I think my brother wrote in to the Buckshot Show to tell them he was turning eight on January 12. Benny the Bear read it live on the air and it put my brother on Cloud Number Nine.
I was a guest on the Buckshot Show three times. The first time I was with my grade 3 class at St. Gerard’s. We were there to sing a song.When we were done, Buckshot talked to us and he asked some of us our names and stuck microphones in our faces. I was one of the chosen and I can tell you that my television debut came at the ripe old age of eight when I told all of Buckshot’s viewers that my name was Steve.
The other two times, I was on the Buckshot show to perform magic. There’s Shteevie – 14 years old and president of the Calgary Society of Young Magicians. I was sitting next to Buckshot and my magic mentor, Paul Alberstat, who had been performing magic regularly on the show for a number of years. When he gave me the opportunity to perform on TV, I was ecstatic. I remember the routines I performed. They were very easy routines – what seasoned pros derogatorily refer to as “push button magic” – and the memory of doing the Spooky Spots routine on Buckshot still fills me with shame. Later, I would return to the show to perform in the Society of Young Magicians’ magic contest.
The show was filmed in the same studio as the CFCN news.There was something oddly satisfying in knowing that as Brenda Finley read the news from behind the CFCN desk, she was looking at the stylized western set where Buckshot and Benny sang 16 chickens and a tambourine. (Look it up on youtube. It's a great little song.)
I always found Buckshot immensely likable. There exists somewhere a picture of him, me and Benny the Bear. I was 15 – old enough to know that puppets aren’t real – but seeing Benny lying on the floor with no life in him did a lot to exorcise the last of my childhood. I wanted to believe that puppets are magic. I still do.
The Buckshot Show wouldn't survive today. Its downhome folksy charm was a hit in the 80s but it would be hopelessly antiquated in the ocean of channels available via satellite. Kids won't sit still and watch live actors interact with puppets anymore. Now they have colourful computer animated mermaids to entertain them. Technology marches on and it is good but it is also bad.
The Buckshot Show may be destined to become nothing more than a footnote in the annals of Canadian broadcasting history. Ron Barge is now in his mid-70s and Calgarians stop him all the time whenever he's out in public. He is a celebrity who made people's lives better just by being himself.
Buckshot deserves the Order of Canada.
Here is Buckshot, an affable Calgary entertainer named Ron Barge who wound up becoming one of the greatest children’s entertainers his country has ever produced. His set looks like a ghost town straight out of the old west. Buckshot is a middle-aged bespectacled man, appropriately decked out in cowboy hat, vest, and sheriff’s badge. It’s not hard to see that the Calgary Stampede – arguably the city’s biggest claim to fame – is the show’s chief inspiration. Buckshot lacks the extreme gentleness of Mister Rogers or the unapologetic zaniness of Mr. Dressup. Even so, he is genuine. He doesn’t talk down to kids and he doesn’t promise them the moon. His show, broadcast over the lunch hour, is a cornucopia of skits, songs, special guests, cartoons and, the show’s trademark, having Benny the Bear, a puppet, read birthdays out of the Birthday Book. I think my brother wrote in to the Buckshot Show to tell them he was turning eight on January 12. Benny the Bear read it live on the air and it put my brother on Cloud Number Nine.
I was a guest on the Buckshot Show three times. The first time I was with my grade 3 class at St. Gerard’s. We were there to sing a song.When we were done, Buckshot talked to us and he asked some of us our names and stuck microphones in our faces. I was one of the chosen and I can tell you that my television debut came at the ripe old age of eight when I told all of Buckshot’s viewers that my name was Steve.
The other two times, I was on the Buckshot show to perform magic. There’s Shteevie – 14 years old and president of the Calgary Society of Young Magicians. I was sitting next to Buckshot and my magic mentor, Paul Alberstat, who had been performing magic regularly on the show for a number of years. When he gave me the opportunity to perform on TV, I was ecstatic. I remember the routines I performed. They were very easy routines – what seasoned pros derogatorily refer to as “push button magic” – and the memory of doing the Spooky Spots routine on Buckshot still fills me with shame. Later, I would return to the show to perform in the Society of Young Magicians’ magic contest.
The show was filmed in the same studio as the CFCN news.There was something oddly satisfying in knowing that as Brenda Finley read the news from behind the CFCN desk, she was looking at the stylized western set where Buckshot and Benny sang 16 chickens and a tambourine. (Look it up on youtube. It's a great little song.)
I always found Buckshot immensely likable. There exists somewhere a picture of him, me and Benny the Bear. I was 15 – old enough to know that puppets aren’t real – but seeing Benny lying on the floor with no life in him did a lot to exorcise the last of my childhood. I wanted to believe that puppets are magic. I still do.
The Buckshot Show wouldn't survive today. Its downhome folksy charm was a hit in the 80s but it would be hopelessly antiquated in the ocean of channels available via satellite. Kids won't sit still and watch live actors interact with puppets anymore. Now they have colourful computer animated mermaids to entertain them. Technology marches on and it is good but it is also bad.
The Buckshot Show may be destined to become nothing more than a footnote in the annals of Canadian broadcasting history. Ron Barge is now in his mid-70s and Calgarians stop him all the time whenever he's out in public. He is a celebrity who made people's lives better just by being himself.
Buckshot deserves the Order of Canada.
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