Max Ferguson, OC (February 10, 1924 – March 7, 2013) was a Canadian radio personality and satirist, best known for his long-running radio programs Rawhide and The Max Ferguson Show on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
Biography
Early life
Max Ferguson was born on 10 February 1924, in Crook, County Durham in England, the second son of William George (George) Ferguson and Isabella Frances (Isabel) née Finnegan.
In 1926, with Max barely past his second birthday, the Ferguson family emigrated to Canada, departing from Cobh, Ireland on 22 May aboard the Minnedosa, and arriving in Montreal, Quebec on the 29th. They eventually settled in Ontario.
Other than an occasional trip to Ireland, visiting relatives in his mother's birthplace in County Laois (aka County Leix and Queen's County), Ferguson was raised in London, Ontario, and graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a BA in English and French.
Career
In the summer of 1946 he was hired as an announcer at radio station CFPL in London, but later that year relocated to Halifax, Nova Scotia, for the opportunity to join the CBC as a staff announcer with the local station in the CBC Halifax Radio Building. According to his autobiography, And Now...Here's Max (1967), he was appalled to find among his assignments the task of hosting a cowboy music show called After Breakfast Breakdown. To protect his anonymity, and in hopes of quick reassignment, he improvised the character of "Old Rawhide", assuming the voice of an elderly ranch hand and giving colourfully disdainful appraisals of the songs he introduced. The character was a breath of fresh air to listeners of the staid national broadcaster, and they relayed their approval with volumes of mail. Accepting his fate, Ferguson devised an entire repertory company of raucous and bizarre characters to interact with Rawhide (all voiced by Ferguson) to amuse himself and his audience, creating daily skits which parodied literary classics and satirized current events and CBC personalities. Recurring characters (other than Rawhide) included pompous, adenoidal CBC announcer Marvin Mellobell, The Goomer Brothers, Little Harold, The Black Widow Spider, and the adventurous Granny.
In 1949, the show's popularity led the corporation to transfer Ferguson to its head office in Toronto, where he would broadcast nationally. Rawhide's first coast-to-coast broadcasts caused something of a national controversy when a Member of Parliament rose to denounce the show for its low humour and abuse of the English language. However, it remained one of the most popular programs on air, lasting some seventeen years. Along the way, the cowboy music was dropped in favour of esoteric folk music, making Ferguson a pioneer in the world music genre long before the term existed. He was also able to originate his broadcasts from his beloved Maritimes for a few years in the mid-1950s. Between 1955 and 1960, Ferguson recorded three albums on Folkways Records, each a part of the Rawhide satirical series. From 1954 to 1961, (while continuing the Rawhide radio program) he branched out to television to host the nightly CBC Halifax program Gazette, and later the CBC Toronto production Tabloid.
Ferguson announced he was retiring Rawhide and all of the associated Rawhide characters in 1962, and kept to his word—his subsequent radio ventures did not incorporate any of these characters. Instead, he launched the 5-days-a-week Max Ferguson Show beginning in 1962, featuring ethnic music and topical skits based on the news of the day. The latter were always highlighted by Ferguson's uncanny ability to mimic prominent politicians and celebrities. Ferguson wrote his own topical sketches, based on the morning's news, and performed all the voices live-to-air. The show was introduced in grandiloquent fashion by another CBC legend, Allan McFee, who always ended his piece with the mellifluous "And now...here's Max".
Ferguson was the subject of the 1966 National Film Board of Canada profile Max in the Morning which detailed a typical morning spent preparing and hosting his radio show. That same year he became the first man to voice the Hulk and Dr. Bruce Banner for Marvel Comics in "The Marvel Super Heroes" show. He also narrated several films, and wrote the whimsical children's story and its subsequent film short "Has Anybody Seen My Umbrella?" (1990).
The radio show remained what Ferguson was best known for, however. The daily Max Ferguson Show wrapped up on June 25, 1971 after a -year run; Ferguson's final sketch featured John Diefenbaker, Pierre Trudeau and Robert Stanfield (all voiced by Ferguson) expressing relief that they would no longer be on the show.