Greatest Hits: Wayne and Shuster’s kids are helping to bring their parents’ classic comedy skits to a new generation

North Star is on vacation this week, so we're rerunning some of our favourite episodes. This one originally aired May 4th, 2023

Canadians of a certain age will remember listening to the comedy duo of Wayne and Shuster on the radio—and, later, watching them on television from the 1950s well into the 1980s. The duo met in high school in Toronto’s prewar Jewish neighbourhood around Harbord Collegiate, where they began writing and performing sketch comedy. After returning from entertaining the troops overseas during the Second World War, they joined the television era, with specials pulling in audiences of millions and worldwide syndication.

Since their fathers' deaths, Wayne and Shuster’s children have been campaigning to convince the CBC—which owns the broadcast rights to much of their parents’ material—to air it for the first time in years for a new generation of Canadians to enjoy. These efforts have not been successful, so the families are taking a new strategy. They teamed up with Bygone Theatre, a theatre company in Toronto, to mount a live Wayne and Shuster stage show that opened at the University of Toronto’s Hart House Theatre in May 25, 2023. It went on a national tour, too. Audiences got to see high-profile Canadian actors perform such classic W and S skits as “Rinse the Blood Off My Toga” and “A Shakespearean Baseball Game”. Michael and Brian Wayne joined The CJN Daily, along with Rosie Shuster and the producers of the play, Emily Dix and Conor Fitzgerald.

**What we talked about
**

• When the City of Toronto named a lane after Wayne and Shuster, in The CJN

• For Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017, The CJN ran this profile of Wayne and Shuster

• Watch “Rinse the Blood off my Toga” on YouTube



Credits

• Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)

• Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)

• Original Music: Dov Beck-Levine

• Current Music: Bret Higgins



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