For this one we’ll rewind back to around 2001.
A chance drive in the outskirts of Halifax landed me a box of betamax tapes at a roadside sale in a parking lot that I believe was somebody cleaning out the basement of a church but I don’t remember.
Lots of items, tons of library “discard” books, and there was a box of beta and a box of VHS tapes at the time, likely destined for a dumpster and I only took the beta because somebody else was interested in the VHS. There were two VHS tapes in the box I didn’t take that were named Bixby and Me. The name stood out then because of some distant memory and I never forgot it, the only other tape in there that stood out was called Firehouse-something or other but I still don’t know what that one was.
2015
I’m something of a lost media enthusiast, and every so often I’ll search for lost media connected to the Maritimes. I can’t quite recall where I first saw it, but I came across a mention of Bixby and Me. It stood out to me because of that prior tape encounter.
After a bit of searching and not much to show for it, and one grainy screenshot of an orange cat later, I became convinced I was going to find this show. All it took was that single image, and I knew exactly what I was looking for. I was chasing a memory as grainy and indistinct as the small picture I had found.
After that, and as more people started following what I was doing, I started getting occasional requests for Bixby from other people with hazy memories of an orange cat and a treehouse.
A few public posts and a $100 cash reward for the first person to hand me a tape verified to contain anything from Bixby finally coaxed this cat out of the bag in January 2026, when a chance encounter led to the discovery of a single surviving episode.
Bixby and Me “Cousin Custard” 1976 Episode
The show was produced and aired between 1975 and 1976 by CBHT (CBC Halifax) in cooperation with the Nova Scotia Department of Education as part of NSSTV, the Nova Scotia School Television service, which aimed to use television as a classroom tool to supplement traditional teaching. Bixby was typically used in a physical education setting as each episode featured movement and exercise sometimes involving objects like ropes, mats, or balls.
Looking back now, it’s like Bixby was preparing everybody for the future boss we might end up with. Bixby’s gruff voice was provided by Bill Fulton who was better known for dawning his red suit as Santa Claus on CBC in the days leading up to Christmas for the better part of 3 decades.
Bixby’s creator and puppeteer was fellow maritimer Cheryl Wagner. While not well known in 1975, Wagner would go on to work on Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock as puppeteer for the full 5 season run. She would also lend her talents to other Canadian classics like Mr. Dressup and TVO’s Today’s Special.
She would eventually create and produce The Big Comfy Couch on YTV in the 1990’s.
So what happened to Bixby?
Bixby was available in regional elementary schools via broadcast and later as tapes from his inception through the 1980s before eventually disappearing. No official home media releases of Bixby or other NSSTV productions were ever issued to my knowledge. Tape copies however, were made available to teachers free-of-charge (provided you send in a blank tape) from CBC’s ETV program through the early 1980s and tapes of the program were known to remain in circulation within the education system into the 1990s. So far, none of these VHS or Beta tapes have surfaced.
CBC Fire incident:
An unconfirmed account suggested Bixby and another number of master tapes were lost in a fire in Halifax, supposedly Halifax entrepreneur Bill Mont, yes, that Bill Mont, came upon and intercepted these master tapes on their way to a dumpster and scooped them up… so they may still be out there somewhere.
Other ETV series that were available from CBC that you may remember were Turtle Soup and Thurberd’s World.
If you have more Bixby or more ETV programming, please reach out to me.
