When Sunwapta Broadcasting first produced and aired local television in Edmonton in 1954, CFRN aimed daytime programs at the homemaker audience, which included my mother, doing the work of having babies, raising children and housekeeping. The first attempts featured local male personalities and failed until Laura Banks applied for and secured the job on the spot.
Laura Banks heard about the opening for a female host when her son, musician Tommy Banks, brought over a friend who worked at the station. Over coffee, he told Laura that 33 women had auditioned, but none had been chosen. When Laura suggested herself for the job, the boys laughed at her. The next morning, she went to the CFRN studio and told station manager Sid Lancaster that she would do the homemaker’s show every weekday. Without an audition, she was asked to go on air that afternoon. She declined because she had a date with her husband Ben at the racetrack, but she agreed to start the next day without rehearsal.
Laura Banks wanted a stage name. Her sister in Oklahoma, whose married name was Lindsay, named her little girl after her, so she decided to use the name Laura Lindsay. Although her show had many titles, including Siesta Fiesta to start, most women referred to it simply as Laura. Laura said, “On the show, I feel that I am exchanging ideas with other women.”[1] “I prefer to use an informal approach with the viewers. I want them to feel that I am in their living rooms with them,”[2] as if she was their guest instead of the other way around. Laura drew on the skills she had learned as a wife and mother and later recalled: “I felt what the women wanted was another mature woman who lived the kind of life they did and had something to share with them.”[3] My mother remarked: “She was lovely. She had no airs. She was one of us. Confident. She inspired us.”
The Laura Lindsay show was the first woman-to-woman program in the province designed to provide homemaking ideas, recipes, fashion and sewing tips, as well as interviews with interesting people, especially performers passing through. After her half-hour segment, Laura introduced the Siesta Cinema movie (her selection) and gave messages from sponsors at intervals during the program. In a Mothers’ Day tribute thirty years later called, “Laura gave us a dream,” Edith Kirby wrote that Laura showed “There was life beyond home and children. . . Remember how we’d get the babies into bed for the afternoon nap, so we could watch her show?”[4]
Born Laura Brown in Yellowgrass, Saskatchewan, Laura’s family lived “everywhere from Florida to Vancouver” because her father was a salesman. She frequently went to “three or four schools every term,”[5] which may have formed Laura Lindsay’s later skill of “placing everyone she meets at ease, an ability found extremely useful while interviewing timid or mildly frightened guests on her program.”[6] She was an actor and dancer before she married musician Ben Banks.
When Laura returned to performing at the age of 41 with her own television show, it was the culmination of a lifelong dream: “Ever since I was a little girl, my one ambition was to be on the stage or in movies.”[7] Her previous experience included winning an advertising contest describing the value of a home freezer, making dresses and uniforms, selling sewing machines and freezers, and reading cookbooks. I suspect that Laura, like my mother, believed that if you could read, you could cook. But the added value of experiential learning by watching Laura on television made her methods not only instructive, but entertaining.
Laura lived with her husband and five children aged nine to 22 in a split-level in Belgravia, one block away from my own home. Although the house is no longer there, the distance from my neighborhood to the CFRN station ten kilometers west of the city limits gives a sense of Laura’s working day. First, she did all the shopping for the cooking segments, visited sponsors and the store that provided her on-stage wardrobe, then drove to the station. Without any assistants, Laura organized interviews, planned and prepared sewing and recipes. On air from 1 pm to 1:30, she continued through the afternoon as host of Siesta Cinema, read the commercials, and cleaned up her living room, sewing station and kitchen sets. Then Laura went home to cook for her family and plan for the next day.
Laura’s shows were unscripted, live and not taped. CFRN producer-director Al Holownia remembered: “She didn’t write very much. She’d ad lib. She was never lost without a script.”[8] Former lighting assistant Fred Vos recalled: “She had so much class and knew how to handle us guys.”[9] And Sid Lancaster, who hired Laura, acknowledged, “she is able to speak with authority on all subjects of interest to women. . . and has proven highly popular with the viewers and staff alike.”[10] The studio crew were also happy recipients of the day’s cooking.
Sometimes, like in Lessons in Chemistry, a novel by Bonnie Garmus and television series set in the 1950s, Laura had to handle cooking goofs. Once, callers phoned in to remind Laura that she forgot the eggs in a cookie recipe. Another time, the steak caught fire, and Laura calmly moved to the sink and doused it, saying, “It really didn’t hurt the steak.”[11] Her poise and deliberate speaking in the kitchen, never rushed, were equal in the living room set – where she put all her attention on her interview guest, not the camera. Some of the visitors to Laura’s show include Klondike Kate, Harry Farmer, who provided music while Laura read a Christmas story, singer Robert Goulet, and husband-and-wife actors Charles Templeton and Sylvia Murphy. Laura also invited local business owners and charity sponsors to her show.
Advertisers flocked to Laura. In a 31-page magazine from 1958, TV Radio News, no less than 12 pages are given to either photos of Laura, her story, or ads connecting products to her show, for example, “Sunbeam Bread, Advertised and Recommended on Siesta Fiesta.” Sometimes, her image alone appears with the product, as if there was no need to include her name.
In 1963, while Laura appeared on Channel 3, her son Tommy Banks had his own show, Somewhere There’s Music and later, Keynotes, on Channel 5. Part of “the only mother-son team in Canadian television,” Laura commented that what she likes best about her job are the people she meets and those who phone or write to her or speak to her on the street: “If they did not recognize me, I might just as well fold up.”[12] During her years on television, Laura also acted as emcee, judge, model for brand endorsements, fashion show commentator, and appeared at openings and on panels. She was awarded by the Federation of Edmonton Community Leagues for her promotion of the community league movement by “cheerfully attending” social events all over the city.
Meanwhile, Laura undertook the compilation, production and sales of her own cookbook, Laura’s Recipes. The recipes came unbound, a stack of three-hole punched 6 x 9-inch pages that purchasers could fit in a small standard binder. Copies of the 80-page first edition in November 1964 were available for one dollar. The book begins with an acknowledgement to Sunwapta Broadcasting and the origin of the Stoney word “Sunwapta,” which refers to the small radiating waves of water when a stone breaks the surface. It ends with advice on dieting, “How to Feel ‘In the Pink’ in 10 Days.” The menus and recipes on the diet pages are prefaced by a note in bold type, “Consult your doctor BEFORE dieting.”
The copy of Laura’s Recipes that I perused has stars and lines drawn by its previous owner around “Yacht Club Beans” and “Baked Asparagus and Potato Chips.” There are sections on Main Courses, Breads, Cakes and Cookies, Desserts, and Pies. Except for the examples above, there are few recipes for vegetables except tomatoes and salad dressings, possibly because cooks didn’t need them or, as Laura says, “The main course is the jewel for which the rest is the setting.”[13] The recipes are straightforward, uncomplicated, neatly presented, and with the odd, charming typo: “pickled pink beats.” On pages where extra space permits, Laura tucks in household and mothering tips, for example, “A child’s clothing should show up against the background in which he is playing. . . more easily seen by motorists and busy mothers.”[14] She also recommends that women set aside a half-hour a day for themselves.
Laura’s Recipes sold over 30,000 copies[15] and continued to sell after Laura retired from television in 1968. Ten years later, when asked why she left her show, Laura replied: “This was it: my family or TV and I chose my family. I’ve never regretted it.”[16] She reflected on what women told her: “You taught me two things: how to cook the Canadian way and how to speak English.”[17] Laura “didn’t like a show where they have a drink of wine every second word,”[18] no doubt referring to The Galloping Gourmet, which began airing in 1968. In keeping up with the times, Laura didn’t think she wanted a microwave oven until her family gave her one: “But I love it. You just have to read your book and your recipes and study it.”[19] In retirement, Laura turned to ceramics and gardening, visiting grandchildren, and travel.
Laura was succeeded by Virginia Macklin, who said, “I firmly believe that a woman should have interests outside the home” and “There has to be something to stimulate and interest the mind.”[20] Laura Lindsay demonstrated both truths in front of the camera at a time when women had to open their own doors to work outside the home. Although Laura was certainly “attractive and willing to work” like the saleswomen she hired to sell her cookbook,[21] in a 1963 interview titled “Women Claimed not Inferior,” Laura explained, “Intelligence and ability are the measures.”[22] As a working mother and businesswoman, Laura had her own standards of balancing work and family life: “Neither Ben nor I bring our jobs home with us. In a home where both the mother and father work, the activities of the children are much more interesting and important for table talk.”[23] Laura also dispensed other advice on parenting: “Your children are most likely to imitate what you really are—not what you say you are—or even what you may believe you are.”[24]
Laura, a champion of women and families, died in 1988 at the age of 74. The CFRN tribute to Laura Lindsay can be seen in the video clip below. Ten years later, the City of Edmonton named Lindsay Crescent, near Rabbit Hill Road, in her honor.
[1] TV Radio News, “The Laura Lindsay Story,” 5.
[2] CBC Times, “Where the Men Failed . . . Laura Succeeded,” 4.
[3] Vlieg, “Laura still homemaking,” 113.
[4] Kirby, “Laura gave us a dream,” 69.
[5] TV Radio News, “The Laura Lindsay Story,” 5. Laura gave her birthplace as Yellowgrass, SK, in this 1958 interview article; in her CFRN obituary, her place of birth is cited as Devon, AB.
[6] TV Radio News, “The Laura Lindsay Story,” 4.
[7] TV Radio News, “The Laura Lindsay Story,” 4.
[8] Edmonton Journal, “Former TV host Laura Lindsay dies,” 20.
[9] Kirby, “Laura gave us a dream,” 69.
[10] TV Radio News, “The Laura Lindsay Story,” 1.
[11] TV Radio News, “The Laura Lindsay Story,” 17.
[12] Fitzpatrick, “Mother-Son Team Television First,” 12.
[13] Lindsay, Laura’s Recipes, 5.
[14] Lindsay, Laura’s Recipes, 76.
[15] Vlieg, “Laura still homemaking,” 113.
[16] Vlieg, “Laura still homemaking,” 113.
[17] Vlieg, “Laura still homemaking,” 113.
[18] Vlieg, “Laura still homemaking,” 113.
[19] Vlieg, “Laura still homemaking,” 113.
[20] Edmonton Journal, “Outside Interests a Must,” 62.
[21] Edmonton Journal, “Laura Lindsay Distributors,” 30.
[22] Minekus, “Women Claimed Not Inferior,” 6.
[23] TV Radio News, “The Laura Lindsay Story,” 17.
[24] Lindsay, “Good Old Dad!”, 25.
Sources:
CBC TV Times, Prairie Edition. “Where the Men Failed . . . Laura Succeeded: The story of CFRN-TV’s hostess Laura Lindsay.” Vol. 12, No. 15. April 3, 1959, 4. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/CANADA/CBC-Times/1959/CBC-Times-1959-04-12.pdf
CFRN TV. “A Tribute to Laura Banks,” November 1988. Provincial Archives of Alberta PR1993.0378.1985.
Daily Oklahoman. “Laura Lindsay, Edmonton TV Personality.” October 3, 1965, 119. https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/452051726/
Edmonton Journal. “Federation Honors Four.” September 20, 1965, 27. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2397649897/E08762207773413EPQ/1?accountid=46585&sourcetype=Newspapers
Edmonton Journal. “Laura Lindsay Distributors.” March 21, 1968, 30. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2397603738/323B29F1E184DF1PQ/3?accountid=46585&sourcetype=Newspapers
Edmonton Journal. “Outside Interests a Must—CFRN-TV’s Virginia Macklin.” May 10, 1968, 62. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2397602769/FA8C605EFEBC457CPQ/7?sourcetype=Newspapers
Edmonton Journal. “BANKS, Laura Obituary.” November 10, 1988, 52. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/november-10-1988-page-52-92/docview/2400962946/se-2
Edmonton Journal. “Former TV Host Laura Lindsay dies.” November 17, 1988, 20. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2401422868/8A8C2B399E8C4713PQ/20?sourcetype=News papers
Fitzpatrick, Freda. “Mother-Son Team Television First.” Edmonton Journal. January 3, 1963, 12. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/january-3-1963-page-12-28/docview/2396892856/se-2
Kirby, Edith. “Laura gave us a Dream.” Edmonton Journal. May 10, 1996, 69. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/may-10-1996-page-69-211/docview/2402384439/se-2
Lindsay, Laura. “Good Old Dad!” The Edmontonian. Vol. 17, No. 39. June 20, 1964, 25. Print.
Minekus, Janet. “Women Claimed Not Inferior.” Edmonton Journal. March 29, 1963, 6. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/march-29-1963-page-6-52/docview/2396908675/se-2
TV Radio News. “The Laura Lindsay Story.” Vol. 9, No. 9. November 16, 1958, 4-31. Print. Provincial Archives of Alberta PR2009.0005/253.
Vlieg, Janet. “Laura still homemaking but now it’s her own.” Edmonton Journal. September 30, 1978, 68. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/september-30-1978-page-113-164/docview/2397703021/se-2
