BY HEIDI
ULRICHSEN
Rita Celli, the new host of Ontario Today on CBC Radio, is a
Greater Sudbury girl to the core.
She was chosen for the job after former host Alan Neal decided
to leave the program to host two other CBC Radio programs -
Fuse and Bandwith.
Starting Monday, Sept. 11, Celli will take over the popular
province-wide lunchtime news and phone-in show, which attracts
between 250,000 and 500,000 listeners every day.
Celli, 37, grew up in Gatchell near the Caruso Club, and
studied journalism at Carleton University. After graduating in
1991, she got her first job as a reporter at CBC Radio in
Sudbury.
"I spent a few years up there. In some ways, it was the best
place to start as a reporter. I got to travel alone to
Temagami, New Liskeard, Attiwapiskat, Moosenee and Fort
Albany," she says.
"I'm not that old, but I remember trying to feed radio
sound from up north. I used to travel with a black telephone
that I could plug in."
Celli says she missed the north terribly when she moved to
Ottawa in 1994 to host the city's CBC Radio morning show.
For the past four and a half years, she's been the host of
CBC television's Ottawa supper hour newscast.
"I'm still pretty attached to Sudbury in a lot of ways. Not
too long ago I came home and went up to where the Big Nickel
is, because you can see over to where my parents live. I got
very nostalgic," she says.
"I picked up a piece of slag and I started crying. It was
partly because the feeling of that slag is so unusual. This is
the stuff that I watched when I was kid being dumped out of
cauldrons. It has that really smooth, swirly feel. I thought
'How many times as a kid did I feel that?'"
Celli is excited to be working in radio again.
"That sense of conversation and continuing that on air for two
hours is really exciting. I'm hoping to find the universal
themes that touch people," she says.
"The phone-in aspect is very special. People love to
communicate with each other. It's really fascinating to
hear the stories people can tell, and how they can animate
issues with one another. It's a virtual community."
The host promises not to "hog" Ontario Today's weekly
gardening consultant, Ed Lawrence, by asking him questions
about her own garden. Lawrence is extremely popular among
listeners.
"That guy is an icon. I've been trying to figure out how
many times I've heard him say, very politely and patiently,
things like 'What you want to do is mix four parts water
and one part soap.' He's wonderful," she says.
"I have my own questions for him, but I'll make sure I do
that off air."
Celli has a lot of ideas for stories and phone-ins.
"One of the things that I have thought about is that it would
be really neat to track down some interesting guests that
aren't necessarily experts on something, but are actually
just amazing people," she says.
"You might want to call in and ask Doris, 'What did it feel
like when you ran into a burning house and saved three children
along the way?' That would be kind of cool."
Catch Ontario Today weekdays between 12 and 2 pm at 99.9 FM in
Greater Sudbury.
