THE EVERGREEN PLAYGROUND

If you ever seen the Evergreen Playground
A part of your heart it always will be
You'll be filled with its dreams and thrilled with its wonders
Wonders that spring from the land,
embraced by winds from the sea
If you've ever seen the Playground,
These fond memories are sure to remain--
The fog creeping slow 'cross Lion's Gate Bridge
And the North Shore turned misty with the soft morning rain
From the fresh green splendor of Stanley Park
To the waterfront where the lonely horns bloe--
The warm summer sands of English Bay
The mountains made bright with winter snow--
We sing the song of the Evergreen Playground
We want to be part of its great destiny,
We belong to the Evergreen Playground,
We belong to Vancouver, B.C.

I recall a line at the end replacing B.C. with C.H.Q.M.



To promote the Centennial spirit in Vancouver, Bill Bellman, president of CHQM AM-FM commissioned and recorded a song titled "The Evergreen Playground", later accepted by the Vancouver City Council as the city's official Centennial song.  Then came trouble.  The chairman of the Vancouver Centennial Committee was Jim Pattison, co-owner of CJOR.  Vice-chairman was Mel Cooper of CKNW. 
     "We had to be sports and find a way to get the Vancouver stations together to discuss ways of exploiting Bill Bellman's song," Cooper said.  "So we got all the station managers in to a meeting and asked them if they'd back the song or boycott it.  It was a rough, interesting meeting--a little bit restrained because there were City Council people around." 
     The crisis came when executives at the meeting learned CHQM was using "Evergreen Playground" as part of its station identification.  Promoting the song would lead to indirect promotion of CHQM, the station managers felt.  Needless to say, the stations decided ("unamimously" as Cooper noted) not to touch the song with a 10-foot tone arm.  "So we wrote a new song," Cooper said.  "Each station agreed to put up the money for it, a 'noted' song-writer agreed to do it for free and the CBC offered its studios for recording purposes.  Then we got it named the official British Columbia Centennial song. It is typical of what you'd expect to happen in Vancouver radio.