Mr. Dress Up Never Once Used a Script

Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift · Jul 10, 2026 · 9m

Mr. Dress Up ran for thirty two years, and historian Ed Conroy says Ernie Coombs and puppeteer Judith Lawrence built entire episodes with no script at all. Ed contributed vintage television equipment and previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage to a new exhibit in Pickering, where Ernie lived for decades.

Ed traces that instinctive, script-free chemistry back to a single CBC executive who believed children deserved to be spoken to like people, not lectured at, a philosophy Ed argues most kids' programming still has not learned. He calls Ernie simply "the Governor," and after thirty two…