Parka Patrol made the papers ... in Buffalo...
Second Story, Buffalo's News Magazine
Jan 29 1986
By Robert S. Newman
Sons of the Snow Scoop
"From out of the north of Maynooth, Ontario comes the Parka Patrol every Saturday night at 10.05pm, preceded by war-of-the-worlds static and a stentorian warning that the CBC engineers have to 'change the transmitters'--it's THAT far North.
"One of a bunch of new CBC programs that picks up on popular music, this one in particular gives you anything that's 'blues-y, beautiful and bizarre.' Gary Dunford has figured out a format that's only a little bit weird. Every Saturday night, he invites us all into the snowy wastes, homeland to the Parka.
"Membership, he says, is easy--in fact it's specially designed for those of us who never went to summer camp (or if we did, had to wear pj's with little space ships all over them). You get to keep your dog on the Parka, and even walk him, just like you would down here.
"In fact, I took Dunf up on an offer he made one night before Chistmas: send him a Christmas card and he'd send back a surprise. It finally came: not one but four! A badge, a bumpersticker, a biscuit from his dog to mine and a genuine photograph of his dog--wich I first mistook for a seal. But they're not that far North.
"But why did he send me the Xerox copy of his letter? Are the Mounties at work here? Great music, mini-narratives, in a class with Lake Wobegon. But even farther North."
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