Tag Archives: Dale Curd

CBC’s Hello Goodbye makes an emotional return

Anyone who has said goodbye to a loved one before they embark on a trip knows the emotions involved. It happened earlier this year to me when my youngest stepson left on a four-month backpacking adventure in Europe. There was a lump in my throat as I watched him go through security at Toronto Pearson International Airport, knowing he was going away and it wouldn’t be summer until he returned home.

Back for Season 2 on Friday at 8:30 p.m. on CBC, emotions as folks leave and arrive at Pearson are captured by cameras on Hello Goodbye. Host Dale Curd is back too, weaving his way up to people in the Arrivals and Departure areas and getting the personal stories surrounding why they’re there. I don’t recall Season 1 of Hello Goodbye theming its episodes, so apologies to the producers if they did. Friday’s instalment, “Lost & Found,” as Curd says, focuses on empty holes in lives being filled by those they hold dear to them.

The half hour begins with Curd stopping to chat with a man and woman named Linda. He’s her dad and she’s returning to the UK. The catch? Linda is concluding a visit to Canada where she’d met her father for the first time. At 15, the man who’d brought her up as his daughter revealed the truth. After keeping quiet about it for decades, Linda finally asked who her real father was, and sought him out. At Curd’s prompting, viewers learn dad was in the British army in Glasgow and returned to Canada, not knowing he was leaving a future daughter behind. The story gets even more interesting from there, but I’ll let viewers find that out for themselves.

I remain amazed that total strangers are willing to open up to Curd. But, as he told me in January when Season 1 launched, “I just let the conversation unfold. If I opened up the space just to allow them to share and let the conversation build naturally and ask natural questions, they wanted to tell me more.”

That’s certainly the case of the next person Curd speaks to, a young woman waiting for her fiancé to arrive from France. During their chat, she reveals how long she’s been in a wheelchair, the circumstances surrounding the incident and how the home she grew up feeling comfortable become a foreign space after her accident.

It’s an emotional episode, but then saying hello or goodbye to someone you care about it like that, isn’t it?

Hello Goodbye airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m. on CBC.

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Link: Dale Curd probes for non-flighty emotion in airport-set series ‘Hello Goodbye’

From Bill Harris of Postmedia Network:

Dale Curd probes for non-flighty emotion in airport-set series ‘Hello Goodbye’
Imagine you’re standing at the airport and this guy wanders up and wants to know intimate details of your life. You might call security, right?

Well, it probably says something about me psychologically that my reaction to the new CBC series Hello Goodbye changed somewhat when I learned more about the host. Continue reading.

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CBC’s Hello Goodbye tells our stories via Canada’s busiest airport

Turns out Torontonians really do like to talk. Despite the belief they are a reserved folk, Dale Curd found them to be downright chatty when he spoke to them during Season 1 of CBC’s newest series, Hello Goodbye.

Adapted from the international series devised by BlazHoffski, CBC’s take on the 10-parter—debuting Friday, Jan. 8, at 8:30 p.m.—finds psychotherapist Curd traipsing around Toronto Pearson International Airport, getting the stories behind the folks in the departures and arrivals lounge. As expected, there is plenty of emotion, whether it be from those saying goodbye, or tearfully welcoming someone home. What struck me as I watched the first instalment is how readily complete strangers are willing to tell Curd their personal stories, whether it be that of a boyfriend seeing his gal pal after eight months apart or a man describing how much his arriving wife helped him get over the death of his father. It’s pretty engaging and emotional stuff.

“I just let the conversation unfold,” Curd says. “If I opened up the space just to allow them to share and let the conversation build naturally and ask natural questions, they wanted to tell me more. Those two men got to a point in the conversations where they felt it was important for me to know about them.” Rather than steer the conversation as most reality hosts do through talking, Curd mostly listens intently, letting his subjects speak and tell their tales. The former host of OWN Canada’s Life Story Project says by the time he’d been speaking to someone for nine to 10 minutes, they began to relax and open up; in some cases interviewer and interviewee both lost track of time, something truly remarkable in an international airport where schedules rule over all.

Curd has made a career out of listening to people, but even he was surprised during production of Hello Goodbye. He conducted a personal experiment: when cameras weren’t rolling, he’d wander into the crowd and strike up off-the-cuff conversations away from the series. What did he learn? People are generally open to discussion whether on-camera or not. He also discovered that—though Pearson is located in Toronto—the folks within in represent the nation.

“There are people from all over Canada who are coming to this hub,” he says. “[Domestic arrivals] really opened up my eyes to how many people from how many different places in Canada actually come through Pearson airport.” These are their stories.

Hello Goodbye airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m. on CBC.

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