ABSTRACT
Loretta Todd Loretta Todd's Vancouver apartment is filJed with radios. Sure, the sun-dappled West End flat – perched on the top floor of a weatherworn four-story build ing – has other things to offer. There are scads of framed family photos, rows of high-end detective novels, and some black-faced stereo equipment, complete with a satellite hook-up currently tuned to a world-music station. Next to an old easy chair, the current New Yorker is folded open to an essay on composer Arnold Schoenberg. But mostly, the visitor is faced by that wall of radios, which range from valuable bakelite numbers from the 1930s to inexpensive reproductions of early transistors. 'They all work," says Todd, who grew up in rural Alberta, the middle child of eight siblings who, most of the time, had no TV. "It was a noisy household, and oddly enough, the radio was one way to get some privacy. I remember lying on the bed, a little plastic radio on my chest, and tuning into places around the world. Well, it wasn't really around the world, but they were places I didn't know, where they had wild deejays, and call-in shows, and music I hadn't heard before."
