AN RANACH DEORAI: Voice of the Celts in Powell River
By SHARON GREER
Early last spring, I received a telephone call from a friend who lives in the Powell River area. He wanted to know if I was interested in providing an arts piece on Celtic books, plays or films for a new Celtic program on a local community radio station.
PHIL RUSSELL
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Phil Russell, who hails from West Belfast, formerly worked on Saoirse Eireann, a radio program which ran for 10 years on Co-Op Radio in Vancouver. He is now the charming host of An Ranach Deorai (The Wandering Exile), a weekly radio show which highlights Celtic music, stories, plays and politics. Launched in May 2003 on JUMP Radio, An Ranach Deorai can be heard every Saturday from 11 AM to 1 PM on 90.1 FM.
Community contributions are made by local residents as well as by members of Celtic communities outside of Canada. Among the “long distance” contributors are Dr. Nigel Hicks of Cornwall, a member of the Cornish Stannary Parliament; Bernard Moffat, General Secretary of the Celtic League based on The Isle of Man; and Father Des Wilson, a West Belfast Community priest who was one of the founders of the Springhill Community House, a community gathering place in Ballymurphy, West Belfast.
Locally, Kathleen O’Neill digs up interesting snippets of news from Celtic countries. Anne Nelson-Finnagan contributes the Powell River Arts Report, Caitlin Bryant makes a weekly report on happenings in Lund, and Davis McKenzie does a weekly report for the Sliammon Nation.
And yours truly, Sharon Greer of Vancouver, a regular contributor to The Celtic Connection, also reads an art piece each week for An Ranach Deorai in the form of a book review. Early in January a group consisting of mostly locals had a lot of fun reading a Celtic murder mystery, Whisperings of the Dead, by Peter Tremayne live on An Ranach Deorai.
JUMP Radio which is owned and operated by The Powell River Model Community Project for Persons with Disabilities Society serves an audience covering Powell River, Texada Island, Sliammon and parts of Cranberry and Lund. Hopefully in the near future the show will be available over the Internet. Stay tuned!
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