Ottawa radio program host's secret to success: she connects (10/24/04)

Ottawa radio program host's secret to success: she connects

by Christopher Guly
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

OTTAWA - When Irena Bell volunteered to produce and host Ottawa's first Ukrainian-language radio program on the city's first multicultural station last fall, she did what she is renowned for doing to determine the best time slot for her show. She connected.

Relying on the e-mail list she uses to distribute Ottawa's monthly Ukrainian events calendar, which she also prepares, Ms. Bell sent messages to about 200 recipients, asking them when they would like to listen to Ukrainian music and current events.

Within 36 hours, she had 40 replies.

Basing its decision in part on the responses, the station chose the breakfast hour on weekends.

Thus, when CHIN Radio Ottawa (CJLL) 97.9 FM was launched last November, the hourlong "Ukrainian Program" made its debut at 8 a.m. on a Saturday (repeated at the same time on Sunday).

Now, the show is not only heard on the radio on weekends, but is also played live over the web at www.chinradio.com/ottawa.asp.

No one in Ottawa's Ukrainian community - estimated at over 17,000 people - has ever had that kind of reach.

While she underscores her role in achieving that, Ms. Bell, former host of the "Ukrainian Profile" Ottawa community cable-television series, couldn't be happier.

"What I enjoy about the program is just being able to highlight events and people, many of whom are involved in interesting activities that not a lot of people know about."

She's featured interviews with Natalia Cmoc, who was involved in archaeological digs in Ukraine; Mykola Ryndzak, who was involved in the Chornybyl clean-up; Irena Makaryk, a University of Ottawa English professor whose English-language book, "Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn: Les Kurbas, Ukrainian Modernism, and Early Soviet Cultural Politics," was recently published by the University of Toronto Press; and Mykola Maimeskul, Ukraine's new ambassador to Canada.

The "Ukrainian Program" has also presented a chat with Emil Baran, a former Canadian diplomat with the Embassy in Kyiv, and his wife, Olena, about their forthcoming three-year sailing trip around the world. The show plans to provide updates on the journey as the couple report back via e-mail.

Ms. Bell does some of the interviews, but Halyna Koryan, a relatively recent arrival from Ukraine who also freelances for Radio Canada International's Ukrainian-language service, conducts most of them.

The "Ukrainian Program" also has permission to run RCI interviews and has done so with such celebrities as Ukrainian opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko and Ukrainian Canadian pop star Chantal Kreviazuk, as well as Ukrainian members of the world-famous, Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil.

Rounding out the 40-percent spoken-word content of the "Ukrainian Program" are features - many of which are in English - that focus on unique Ukrainian traditions, from Christmas celebrations to marking midsummer night's festivities (Ivan Kupalo).

The rest of the show is music, which ranges from the traditional to the contemporary, and covers the gamut of established and emerging recording artists.

Where else in Ottawa would radio listeners hear this year's Euro-Vision song contest winner, super-hot Ukrainian diva Ruslana, the Ukrainian rock bands Okean Elzy and VV, or the British-based book The Ukrainians?

On this side of the Atlantic, the "Ukrainian Program" also has a healthy selection of Canadian talent, including Edmonton-born jazz pianist John Stetch, Winnipeg vocal sensation Alexis Kochan and her group Paris to Kyiv, Toronto's polkameister Ron Cahute, and such up-and-coming Ottawa artists as Victor Kosenko and the rock band Ukrainia.

Ms. Bell also involves members of the community on the show.

Zustrich, a newly formed group of Ukrainian Canadian federal civil servants have made an appearance, as have members of the Ottawa branch of Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization, who sang songs to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk for whom the group is named.

Last Christmas young children attending Ukrainian school in the capital came on and filled the show with carols and Yuletide poems. "Months after, any of the kids who saw me, wave," says Ms. Bell. She's made an impact.

Seniors without access to the Internet thank her for giving them access to information about the homeland and Ukrainian Canadian activities that they otherwise wouldn't receive.

Though CHIN doesn't measure its audience, word through the grapevine has the "Ukrainian Program" on many car radios as people drop their kids off to Ukrainian school or head for the shopping malls on Saturdays or church on Sunday mornings.

"I know non-Ukrainians listen, too," Ms. Bell is quick to add.

Regardless of the number, the fact she receives feedback from listeners is a significant achievement, considering that the Ottawa market has more radio stations, on a per-capita basis, than anywhere else in Canada.

Ms. Bell's show also joins a sizable list of over 10 Ukrainian radio programs across the country. And, they are now starting to network.

Long-time producer-host Paulette MacQuarrie, who runs "Nash Holos" in Vancouver (www.nashholos.com), recently set up a Yahoo discussion group on the Internet for colleagues to stay in touch with one another. The group hopes to meet one day for a huddle to share ideas and strategies.

Though she's the new kid on the block and a neophyte when it comes to radio, Ms. Bell has the mettle to help make such a mini-conference happen.

Industry and a zest for life are in her genes.

Born in Krakow as her parents were fleeing Communist Ukraine at the end of the second world war, she spent her early years in Germany, where the family lived in one room above a dairy.

Before they arrived there, her father, the late Jaroslaw Zajszlyj, who had obtained a degree in agronomy from Krakow's prestigious Jagiellonian University, served as director of the Silskyi Hospodar agricultural association, which also promoted Ukrainian national awareness.

In 1951 the Zajszlyjs left for Canada and settled in Montreal, where they once again shared a single room. Eventually, Ms. Bell's mother, the late Olha Nahirna, who had worked as her husband's secretary in Ukraine, ran a grocery store. The family of the three lived at the back.

After completing high school in Quebec in a system where graduates are much younger than their Canadian counterparts in other parts of the country, Irena Zajszlyj obtained her teacher's diploma.

At the tender age of 18 she was plunked into a school and handed a class of 35 pupils, 30 of whom were Italian and "about 10 of those didn't know a word of English, including Mario at the back who was 17," recalled Ms. Bell.

Soon, however, she would begin a journey filled with serendipity and connections.

After three years of teaching, Ms. Bell returned to school and received a bachelor's degree in English literature from Loyola College (now called Concordia University) in Montreal, and a bachelor's degree in library science from the University of Toronto, where she worked as a librarian at the College of Education Library.

There she met English-born geologist and volcano expert Keith Bell, who was pursuing post-doctoral studies after receiving his doctorate from Oxford University.

They married in 1971 and soon afterwards moved to Ottawa when Mr. Bell was hired as a professor at Carleton University.

Ms. Bell, meanwhile, landed a job at the National Library, where she worked in subject cataloguing. Within two years she was brought on board to a new division, called the Multilingual Biblioservice, which distributed written works in 32 languages to libraries across Canada and served as a model for similar programs in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Ms. Bell served as assistant chief until 1995, when the division closed and its function was devolved to the provinces.

That year the University of Ottawa inaugurated a Chair of Ukrainian Studies and was in search of a coordinator to run the office and organize conferences and lectures.

A long-time community organizer, who had served two terms as president of the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association (UCPBA), vice-president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress Ottawa branch, and recipient of the Ottawa UCPBA's first Filip Konowal Lifetime Achievement Award for long-term volunteer service to the community, Ms. Bell was the obvious choice for the job.

And, she's still at it.

Amid her part-time duties at the university, the silken-voiced, fluently bilingual (Ukrainian and English) radio personality has to, as producer, also find advertisers (she has a few loyal supporters from Ottawa's Ukrainian community) for the "Ukrainian Program." Then there's all the prep work of scouring Ottawa for Ukrainian community current events and news, and listening to the latest Ukrainian music CDs that is required to broadcast exciting and fresh radio.

"Being connected in the community certainly helps," she said.

But Ms. Bell is of that erudite and rare breed whose curiosity of the world is contagious enough that she could easily slip behind a microphone, start talking and mesmerize her audience - about, perhaps, the 10-month course in fine arts she completed at Christie's in London in the early 1980s while her husband was on sabbatical pursuing a diploma in gemology.

Getting enrolled in the Christie's course was itself a challenge.

Ms. Bell had to first travel to New York for an interview and convince the elite of the world-famous art house she had the right stuff.

"The course was meant to build up some loyalty among a clientele who have large art collections," explained the elegant-looking blonde.

"I told them I was interested in African and Byzantine art, neither of which they said they covered. But I said I want to put things into context and it turned out that I used phrasing that one of the interviewers had used in a children's book he had just written. So I lucked into saying something that was similar," she recalled.

Once accepted, Ms. Bell joined a group of about 120 students.

"One-third were Brits with a lot of money, another third were titled Europeans like dukes and so forth, and the other third were rich Americans and Asians. I was the token proletariat," she laughed. "You couldn't joke about having a Renoir hanging over your mantle because these people had them."

Socializing with greyhound racetrack owners, women who had Mercedes-driving chauffeurs deliver their lunches, and barons who had as many castles as the fingers on her hand, Ms. Bell also got to visit country estates with massive private art collections and to see London's finest exhibits up close behind the velvet rope.

Saucer-eyed at times by the opulence surrounding her, Ms. Bell still managed to leave an impression in her inimitable style. "I made friends with Americans and Europeans who didn't mix too much." Once again, she had connected.

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