“It’s who we are, what do we do now?” blurted out the middle aged man in a baseball cap and work boots.
“It’s our world, and now it’s gone,” his buddy added, tears filling his eyes, his mustachioed face turning red.
The two burly fishermen sat on plastic chairs in the Parade Street classroom. They were newly unemployed due to the cod moratorium. I was assigned to talk to them about taking an Adult Basic Education course to finish high school, as the first step to retraining for another life.
I faced them in my sparkly skirt and sneakers, unsure of how to react to the emotion coming from these two men, older than my own father, and having no sweet clue what question to ask them next.
I pressed “record” on my Sony 5000 cassette recorder, held out my microphone and just listened to what they had to say.
Heather Barrett’s trusty Sony 5000 cassette recorder, the state of the art equipment for CBC radio journalists in the mid-1990s. (Heather Barrett/CBC)
It was 1993, and I was dipping my toe into CBC Radio in St. John’s with a handful of temporary reporter shifts. An immediate supervisor or a work buddy would hand you some recording gear and give you some instructions about what to talk to your subjects about, and then you were thrown into the deep end to gather the interviews and sound you needed to tell the story.
I had finished a university degree in journalism after completing a music degree at Memorial University. I was hoping for a career of talking to musicians and artists. I had no idea that it would become a working life of so much more — a life I’m now retiring from.
Around the bay
My first CBC contract job was at the CBC station in Grand Falls-Windsor in the mid-1990s. I racked up thousands of kilometres on the side roads of central Newfoundland and the northeast coast, gathering stories in small communities.
I talked to loggers, miners, town clerks, teachers, dart players, children, seniors, fish plant workers and far too many families who were leaving their outport homes for new jobs and lives in western Canada.
I learned that the best places to find fishermen who could wax poetically about what was to become of their communities were Twillingate and Bonavista.
WATCH | Heather Barrett signs off for the final time:
Heather Barrett steps away from broadcasting after 33-year career with CBC
The voice of Weekend AM has decided it’s time to reclaim the weekend for herself. After a career spanning three decades with the CBC, Heather Barrett is retiring. She spoke with Here and Now’s Carolyn Stokes ahead of her final show. Newfoundland and Labrador has changed
More than 30 years on, Twillingate and Bonavista are tourism and cultural hubs. When I was recording interviews with people in those towns, it was inconceivable that future generations would buy espressos and kombucha in those places. I had never even heard the word kombucha.
Over the years, I figured out how to find a story, ask questions, and how to listen. I worked on local and national CBC programs, made documentaries, and created radio series from scratch. I have dipped into online and video journalism. I recorded classical music shows, made sound effects for comedy shows, and covered municipal, provincial and federal elections — all with a work family of talented, dedicated, and occasionally, hilarious, CBCers.
World Report host John Northcott, Heather Barrett, Weekend AM associate producer/technician Carl Hodder, and newsreader Andrew Hawthorn are shown in the Weekend AM studio in October 2025. (CBC)
When I started at CBC, I literally cut tape to edit sound, using a straight razor blade to slice quarter-inch reel to reel audio tape and stick it back together with translucent sticky tape. I even did a story on the “new thing called the internet.” My career has spanned the digital revolution, and as I wrap it up, all hands are grappling with the next revolution — artificial intelligence.
Who else is in the room?
Regardless of the technology, my job has always been storytelling. Often, I found the best stories have come from the people who are at the margins of big events. An important question I have learned to ask is, “Who else is in the room?”
In 2011, I booked an interview with a young father living in Benghazi during the Libyan civil war. It was surreal to be sitting at a desk in the St. John’s newsroom, while he calmly described on the phone how he had put on a SpongeBob SquarePants video for his children to drown out the sound of distant gunfire. I walked through lower Manhattan with a young woman who retraced her race home from school on 9/11 as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed around her.
Here in Newfoundland and Labrador, I have dug into the stories of teenage girls in the 1940s who went to Canada to work at a huge textile mill in Ontario, and why we know so little about the enslaved Black people whose lives touched our shores over the centuries.
Weekend AM
For the past decade, I have been the host and producer of Weekend AM, where I have talked to many musicians and artists. I am always delighted and surprised by the creative people I meet in this province and who have connected to it from elsewhere.
I have talked to bee keepers, cricket players, curlers, firewood cutters, knitters, monster truck drivers, quilters, runners, scientists, snowmobilers, and even a sword swallower. I have tagged along with Innu students in Sheshatshiu as they shot a video for an original song. Weekend AM guests from our many cultures in Newfoundland and Labrador have shared their stories, traditions and celebrations with our listeners.
Weekend AM host/producer Heather Barrett and monster truck driver Dawn Creten in front of her truck called Scarlet Bandit in July 2018. (Mark Cumby/CBC)
Our Weekend AM team has broadcasted from the home of a royal wedding enthusiast, the basement rec room of former Appleton mayor Derm Flynn, and a small yarn shop in Triton.
Making a meaningful life in Newfoundland and Labrador is always an act of creativity.
Thank you
Most of all, I have to thank the thousands of you, from all walks of life, who have spoken with me over my career. You have welcomed me into your communities, your workplaces, your homes. You have shared your stories, and trusted me to share them with our CBC audience.
And you — the listeners — thank you for opening your ears and your hearts to come with us. It has been the privilege of my life to do this work.
It feels like, after an intense period of study that has lasted more than three decades, I am about to graduate from the “University of CBC.” For the first time since I was that young reporter in a sparkly skirt, I don’t have a clue about what comes next.
This time, I know what to do. First, I am going to listen to the world around me. Then, I’m going to ask questions to find my own next story.
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