Episode 35

35. The Couch Murder on Long's Hill

There’s been a mystery I’ve been trying to solve for thirty years. What happened on New Year’s Eve 1994 at the house on Long’s Hill? Did a couch actually catch fire and hit a house? Were the police called? Did the story make it onto Canadian national radio, and what happened to that couch anyway?

Over the years, the story of the Long’s Hill couch slide has become legend amongst my friends and even amongst those who don’t know us. It’s a story that has grown and changed in the telling. So, I went to some of the original people, including people who had heard the story from others at the time.

Thank you very much to Marc Dyke, Aaron McKim, Andrew Smith, and Mike Mannion. I hope no one is doing literal couch surfing this New Year and that you all have a brilliant year ahead.

I will be back on January 12 on a regular Monday schedule with the podcast. It’s been fun doing a couple of offbeat episodes. In the coming year, I’m looking forward to treating you to some amazing interviews, some great new stories—both fiction and non-fiction—and to delving deeper into the stories that make us human. Until then, be safe and give your pets a cuddle. If you enjoyed this or any other episode, please help me grow my listenership by subscribing or sharing.The image was generated by Gemini.



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About the Podcast

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Tales under the cat tree: Conversations on Imagination, Tech & Human Adventure
Hosted by tech leader and storyteller Duleepa Wijayawardhana, this podcast explores the intersections of technology, fiction, and human adventure. Words create the worlds we live in—join us for weekly conversations that spark your imagination.

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About your host

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Duleepa Wijayawardhana

It started with late nights, glue sticks, and a university newspaper / radio.

That early obsession with how words reach people took me from student journalism to a career spanning the globe. I’ve gone from designing newspapers and having radio shows to building systems at BioWare (yes, the RPG legends), managing data at MySQL, and now leading tech at Supermetrics in Helsinki.

But at my core, I’m still that geek who believes writing is just code for the human mind.

While a computer chip executes code exactly, your imagination runs stories based on your own unique wiring. Tales under the cat tree is where we run those programs together. Whether we're exploring the fiction that inspires us or the tech that defines us, my goal is to spark your imagination and—most importantly—never make you go "meh."

Words create the worlds we live in. Let's explore them.