Storyteller · Broadcaster · Writer · Actor
Otto Lowy
PRAGUE 4 MARCH 1921 — VANCOUVER 28 MAY 2002
A refugee who left Prague at eighteen, two weeks after the German occupation, served with the Czechoslovak airmen of the RAF, and came to Canada in 1948. For twenty-two years he was the voice of CBC Radio's The Transcontinental, a weekly journey on an imaginary train through the music, history and memory of Europe.
“Last week Canada lost one of its greatest storytellers.”
Senator Frank Mahovlich · Senate of Canada · 4 June 2002Life
From Prague to the Pacific
Childhood in Prague and Plzeň, the refugee year in London, the RAF, the loss of his parents in the Holocaust, and a new life in British Columbia.
Read his story →CBC Radio · 1980–2002
The Transcontinental
Search more than 900 programmes by place, composer, singer or season, with his synopses and the music he played.
Board the train →Vancouver stage · 1953–1977
Theatre
The plays, musicals and operettas he directed, from Vancouver Little Theatre and the Arts Club to the summer musicals in Stanley Park, with the original posters.
See the productions →Radio drama · Concerts · Film & TV
Radio, concerts & screen
The radio dramas he wrote and translated, the concerts he narrated, and his roles on screen.
See the work →In his own words
London, 1939
“I'd spend an hour or two in the lobby … in the afternoons. The lobby of the Cumberland, an unofficial club for refugees who had nowhere to go, nowhere to stay. The price of a cup of coffee bought you a couple of hours on the Cumberland's comfortable sofas.”The Transcontinental · “Hyde Park” · 2000
His programmes were full of these memories, slipped in between a Strauss waltz and a Czech folk song: the refugee office in Russell Square that gave him pyjamas, a yellow slicker, Wellingtons and half a crown on his second day in England; the Lyons Corner House where the waiters were refugees too; the hop farm in Kent where he heard that war had been declared.
On the Vancouver stage
Directed by Otto Lowy
For a quarter of a century, from 1953 to 1977, he was one of Vancouver's busiest stage directors. He moved between serious drama, Broadway comedy, Viennese operetta and the big summer musicals of Theatre in the Park in Stanley Park.
Fourteen of the productions in the family collection were at the Arts Club Theatre on Seymour Street, among them Neil Simon's The Odd Couple in November 1967.
About this site
This site gathers what survives of Otto Lowy's working life: the typescripts of his broadcasts and plays, the recordings, the posters and the stories he told on air.
Programme descriptions on this site were drawn from his typescripts. If you remember a broadcast, a play or a concert, or have a photograph or letter, the family would be glad to hear from you.