Inside Vancouver
An Unscripted Life
By John Burns published Sep 2, 2008
The way he tells it, the first time Jurgen Gothe stepped into “scenic subterranean Studio 20” at the CBC building on Hamilton Street, there was a problem. Arriving one day in September 1985 to kick off DiscDrive, the eclectic music show that’s made him—and CBC Radio 2’s drive-home slot—a ratings success for 23 years, Gothe sat down only to face a wall. That was CBC tradition for hosts, but Gothe wanted an audience, someone to talk to. So he rearranged the furniture to have eye contact with the technician in the control room. “I have a little bit of the performer, the showman, in me,” he says. “I wanted to see that visual reaction.”
Reaction of that sort—of any sort—ends on Labour Day, when CBC winds down DiscDrive, the last of the long-time national weekday shows originating in Vancouver. The slot goes to a singer-songwriter showcase hosted by an East Coast hip-hop performer named Buck 65. Meanwhile, Gothe will take on a one-hour Sunday show provisionally titled Farrago and spend the rest of his time in the Mayne Island home he and his wife, the photographer Kate Williams, share with Chloe, a poodle cross rescue dog. Gothe’s departure from the show—by mutual consent, as the CBC tersely describes this and many other recent changes—marks the end of what he himself views as a long detour from the path he set out on decades ago.
From the beginning, Gothe was an unlikely marquee host for CBC. In the mid ’80s he was a private-radio broadcaster and freelance PR guy, writing radio copy for local businesses (including Eaton’s, Pacific region) and hosting a Sunday-afternoon concert show for the Mother Corp. called Front Row Centre. But he was becoming restless. In his early 40s, he was going through a divorce. He’d had enough of radio. Once the weather cleared, he figured he’d move to the Gulf Islands and try his hand at writing mystery novels.
