The Transcontinental

Every week for twenty-two years, Otto Lowy invited CBC listeners aboard an imaginary luxury train. To the theme from Murder on the Orient Express it carried them to Vienna for New Year, to Prague in the snow, to the spa towns of Bohemia and the cafés of Budapest: an hour of music, history, anecdote and memory.

Each programme had to fill exactly fifty-five minutes. He wrote every script by hand, did his research in the Vancouver Public Library and the CBC record library, and timed the records himself with a stopwatch. Programmes ended with the same farewell: “…this is Otto Lowy inviting you to travel with us again next week, at the same time, on the Transcontinental.”

Before it came A Night at the Operetta (1978–79), the series that began it all; those programmes are included below.