CBC - Part 1 - I Would Marry It If I Could

I once had a sex dream about Peter Mansbridge. I suppose his soothing, authoritative delivery of the news suggested to my subconscious that he'd make a good lover. Or maybe I was actually in the midst of idolising his then-wife, Wendy Mesley, and the dream was expression of a wish to be like her. Or maybe the dream -- the details of which, thankfully, I can't remember anymore -- was just the natural next step in my life-long love affair with the CBC.

CBC Radio was always on in our house. As a child, I learned about international affairs, the famine in Africa, war, and Pierre Trudeau from the radio. I remember laughing until I cried at the Air Farce and The Frantics. When I became a prime-time drama junkie, Street Legal on CBC TV was one of my first favourite shows. CODCO and The Kids In The Hall brought more laughter, and the certain knowledge that Canadians were specially and uniquely hilarious. 

That's not just a matter of national pride, although it is that -- it's also a source of encouragement. In the same way that the fact of Sidney Crosby has lifted hockey in Nova Scotia, it helps when you're young and living here to see people on the road ahead, proving that the thing you dream of doing can be done. 

From the age of 10 to 25, I loved listening to Peter Gzowski on Morningside -- his incredible range of topics and interview subjects seemed to bring Canada together and into focus like nothing else. His style was to be unfailingly interested in the conversation and willing to challenge his guests, while always treating both them and his audience with great respect. Gzowski was a great leveller -- bringing everyone from mothers of handicapped children to world leaders into the same seat, treating them with the same importance. 

This was how I came to understand my country and the people in it as a collection of humans -- not only as right and left, powerful and weak, smart or stupid or any of the binaries that much of mainstream media feeds us -- but as real people with experiences, goals, aspirations, problems. 

Gzowski's death left a palpable hole in the weekday mornings on CBC radio, and to my taste it's been filled to a degree now by the combination of Anna Maria Tremonte on The Current and Jian Ghomeshi on Q. When people claim there's been a decrease in quality at CBC Radio, I wonder how more new Gzowskis can be bred when all new hires at CBC are on contract, perhaps unable to make a living or given the time to practice on the way to becoming a master interviewer. 

In Halifax, we're fortunate to have Stephanie Domet hosting Mainstreet in the afternoons, and I think she could be as good as Gzowski in her own way: she has a wonderful voice, enthusiasm for a wide range of stories, and is fully capable of asking tough questions in a smart, straightforward way. (Disclosure: Domet and I have friends in common and when we've met in the past I've found her personally very intelligent, engaged and witty.) Mainstreet is host to an ongoing conversation about the music, events, issues and people of Halifax in a way that doesn't happen on other local radio stations. 

There's a seemingly endless list of other things, too -- like the songs by independent artists I've bought on iTunes after hearing them for the first time on CBC; the fact that my 13 year-old sister learned to cast a critical eye on marketing and commercials from listening to The Age Of Persuasion; that my father listens to Ideas at night before bed, and gifts me with snippets of it when we talk; the warm feeling I get when I'm in the car and hear the theme music for As It Happens, knowing that I'm about to hear funny, interesting stories from around the world. That, as I've said on this blog before, Being Erica became one of my very favourite shows.

Finally, over the past few years, I've had a script in development with CBC and so indirectly made my living for a year or two from the network. Before that, my father-in-law was one of the Executive Producers of the Canadian Antiques Roadshow -- before that, he worked for many years at CBC News in New Brunswick. So my family has seen financial benefit directly and indirectly from CBC. 

This personal financial interest in CBC probably makes me biased in a discussion of CBC. The continued existence of a public broadcaster makes it slightly more likely that I can achieve my own dream of writing Canadian television drama. Some of my passion for CBC does come from self-interest. And why not? Shouldn't anyone with a job they love have an interest in the survival of their industry, their way of life, and defend it with passion? 

So when I hear the attacks on CBC -- from anonymous posters on message boards or from right-wing newspapers or SunTV or the Harper Government -- my reaction is borne partly of self-interest. But it's also borne at least equally by this love affair, this secure knowledge that CBC has fed my view of my country and my world all my life, in a way no commercial network has or seems the least inclined to do. 

Though perhaps I shouldn't, I feel these attacks personally -- as if by attacking the value of CBC, people are attacking the very things I value and strive toward in my life -- being educated; caring about the arts and social issues and local, national, and international events; listening to people who are different, who do different things and come from different places; contributing to Canada and Canadianness as distinct from America, as valuable in its own right, for its own reasons. That my work itself, in all its CBCishness, is worth less than another kind of work. That to take satisfaction and meaning from all those things is a kind of a fool's errand. That as much as CBC has meant to me my whole life and continues to mean to me, others would take it away without a care. 

Yes, I take it personally. 

So I sat down to write a rant about the attacks on CBC...but that rant will have to wait 'til tomorrow, because it seems what I had to say first was: I love the CBC.