After 15 years hosting The Next Chapter — CBC Radio’s award-winning weekly magazine show on Canadian authors and literature — this current season will be the last for Shelagh Rogers: she’s retiring in the spring of 2023.
Rogers has been a broadcasting icon at the CBC with a standout career that has spanned more than four decades. With countless media interviews under her belt, her journalist instinct, heartfelt empathy and uncanny knack for understanding the human narrative has endeared Rogers to Canadian radio audiences.
“I started at CBC Radio when I was 24 years old. The last 43 years have been remarkable,” said Rogers during the May 13, 2023 episode of The Next Chapter.
“I am deeply grateful to the writers I’ve spoken with. I’m also very, very grateful … to [the listeners], for tuning in week after week. But if it’s not too cheesy to express it this way, it’s time for me to get on with my own next chapter. There are other stories I want to tell, and this is my choice,” said Rogers.
“Why leave now? I want to create a space for somebody new. I want to give the keys to somebody else and say, ‘This is yours now — just go for it. Go and use all your creativity, your sense of wonder, curiosity and compassion to tell the stories of this complicated, messy, beautiful country.’
“That’s why I’m leaving.”
Rogers attended Queen’s University as an art history major with dreams of working in a museum or art gallery. But it was sending in pitches to university campus radio station CFRC that launched her into a new world of broadcasting. She would host a country music program while still a student at Queen’s, at Kingston, Ont.-based radio station CKWS and later went on to produce a daily current affairs TV show and served as the station’s late-night weather presenter.
After graduating from Queen’s University’s arts program in 1977 she could be heard on CBC Radio in Ottawa, where she hosted current affairs programs and jazz and classical music broadcasts. In 1982, she became host of the national classical concert program Mostly Music. It was a move to CBC Toronto in 1984 where Rogers became a frequent voice heard on national CBC Radio shows such as Morningside, The Max Ferguson Show and Basic Black. She served as the founding host of The Arts Tonight and was a frequent guest host of Morningside. In 1995, the program’s venerable host, Peter Gzowski, named Rogers the show’s permanent guest host.
Rogers’s CBC Radio career would see her host shows such as This Morning and the flagship weekday morning show Sounds Like Canada, which was a mix of news, arts and culture interview segments. After leaving that show in 2008, she would move on to become the host-producer of The Next Chapter.
“The one word I would use to describe my experience at CBC Radio and The Next Chapter would be ‘thrilling’,” said Rogers.