Diane was hostess of “Follow Me”, a children’s TV show grown out of Trinity Television’s “It’s A New Day”. It was telecast on CKND-TV in Winnipeg.
Kids at school would ask my daughters Monday how come they had been on TV Saturday morning. That’s because they and other children of Diane’s friends were the studio audience.
Uncle Jake, with pince-nez glasses, and Willie, like Big Bird on Sesame Street, were Diane’s favourite puppets.
As a result of being on television, Diane was often asked to be the entertainment at Manitoba summer camps for children. It meant weekend trips for our family. We had a big van that carried the puppet theatre built by my cousin Joe Hiebert.
Set up for a show, the theatre had a grey scrim behind the ledge where the puppets sat. Behind the scrim were the hidden operators of other characters.
I stood back there maneuvering Sparky the Butterfly.
My daughter Rebecca still has those puppets in her basement rec room and sometimes pulls them out to do a show of her own improvisation for her children Isabella and Max.
Diane is Grandma Angel to them because they were grandchildren born after Diane departed this planet. I sometimes write Grandma Angel stories for them.
That period when we were in and out of CKND-TV’s studio was busy, but fun.