In Rural Canada, CBC Brought Us the World

If you grew up in rural Canada, you’re probably very familiar with the CBC.

In the Kootenays, where I grew up, complaining about the CBC is a time-honoured and much-enjoyed activity. On the surface, it might seem like a negative thing. But I would make the argument that this level of critique is a great thing.

One of the qualities that I’m always struck by is that many Canadians — rural, urban and somewhere in between — feel very deeply about our national public broadcaster. For all its blunders and missteps, the CBC is a member of the family. When a family member messes up, everyone feels like it’s their responsibility to point out exactly where they went wrong and suggest (ad infinitum) what they should do differently.

This was abundantly clear earlier this year with Cross Country Checkup, when Ian Hanomansing co-hosted a legendary call-in segment with an American media colleague to discuss the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state of the U.S.

On the February day of the broadcast, I was driving around Richmond with my sister, looking for a place to have lunch. Within minutes of turning on CBC Radio in the car, we were both screaming in rage. After the blood-dimmed tide of fury had subsided a bit, I thought about why it had made me so angry. It wasn’t just the idea of Canada (ugh) being devoured by the U.S. — it was the betrayal of the CBC that cut most deeply. It was as if a much beloved, if occasionally irritating, family member had suddenly become a turncoat.

The outpouring of righteous fury across the country was something to witness, but on a gut level, I completely understood.

Even so, the idea that CBC could somehow cease to exist makes me not just angry but deeply sad.

Pierre Poilievre has called to defund the English-language side of the public broadcaster while keeping Radio-Canada if elected. For me, this hit home with the weight and heft of a baseball bat when watching a recent series of filmed interviews with Canadian musicians who got their start on CBC.

The video, currently online as a series of shorts, was filmed by the advocacy group Save the CBC. It features interviews with musicians from across Canada: contemporary roots musician AHI, Orchid Orchestra singer Rupert Hudson, singer-songwriter Brighid Fry (of Housewife and Kingdom of Birds) and indie folk musician Braden Lam.

Each of the interviewed musicians interviewed is eloquent and passionate, explaining not only how the CBC has impacted their individual careers but also the greater collective experience of growing up listening to a national public broadcaster that highlighted Canadian artists, writers and thinkers.

As AHI says, “Sometimes, we take for granted the things that are just there, and we don’t realize these things that are important to us until they’re just gone.”

Fry is also blunt about what it would mean to Canadians to lose the CBC. “National broadcasters and not-for-profit broadcasters are an integral part of a democracy,” she explains. “That being taken away is really scary. We’re seeing that already happen in the U.S. They’re trying to attack PBS and national broadcasters there, and the idea that Poilievre would want to gut the CBC, I think, is really alarming. And shows we’re heading in a direction that is not where I want to see Canada go.”

It’s an idea taken up by Hudson, who cites the idea that conservative governments are actively trying to supress free speech and the ability to express valid critique. “I think it’s just such a travesty for Canadian culture to take away the CBC.”

Lam sums it up thusly: “The CBC is the glue that we need to keep our communities together, interested, invested and caring for each other.”

“Right now, we’re at a time when we need everything to bring us back together. We don’t need this rhetoric of hate towards each other. We don’t need this greater push to reduce accessibility or reduce diversity — if anything, we need more of that right now. I believe the CBC represents Canada and it represents this beautiful mosaic of people across the country.”

A central part of my upbringing

The CBC, both radio and TV, formed a large part of my cultural understanding. But more than that, it was woven into of the fabric of daily life.

Dinner didn’t start until As It Happens was switched on. The show’s catchy theme song was followed by an introduction to the show’s co-hosts Barbara Frum and Alan Maitland, and later Mary-Lou Finlay and Barbara Budd. They recounted the day’s events and offered interviews, analysis and gentle banter.

While I helped my grandmother in the kitchen, CBC was always there, whether it was Gilmour’s Albums or Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, a broadcast that featured performance from some of the greatest opera houses in the world.

It came over the airwaves like a visitation from another plane of existence, a more rarefied place than our old green farmhouse, with its unfinished attic and ancient screen door with its distinctive slapping sound. It was a reminder that there were other worlds than the Kootenays.

As an 11-year-old opera nerd, I was so obsessed that I wrote a letter to the dryly acerbic host Clyde Gilmour. I requested that he play two of my favourite tenors, Luigi Alva and Jussi Björling.

He read my letter on air, questioning my taste in Alva (I admit it, I just thought he was cute) but grudgingly admitting that Björling was indeed one of the greatest singers in history. I remember the cocktail of emotions from hearing him read my words on air: pride, embarrassment, mortification, pleasure. All in the intense, almost obliterating way that only an 11-year-old can muster.

Many years later, when my sister and I had the opportunity to visit the Metropolitan Opera in New York, my grandmother was the first person I thought of upon seeing that this storied, legendary place was real. It was a little akin to reading about the Land of Oz in all its glory and then walking in the front gates of Emerald City.

It shaped my cultural understanding

CBC was one of the three different channels that we could get on TV, so whatever was on, we watched. The Nature of Things, The Fifth Estate, Second City Television, CODCO, Kids in the Hall — it shaped not only my sense of humour, but my understanding of how to approach ideas with care, thoroughness and a certain kind of curiosity and balance.

In watching the current crop of CBC shows, this same quality lingers. It’s clear in a show like Allegiance. Sure, it’s a police procedural following a long line of similar shows, but it somehow manages to impart a more nuanced take on issues as varied as gang violence to bullying.

CBC doesn’t always get it right, but even the misfires, clunky or awkward still manage a level of charm. A case in point is Wild Cards. The show features a smart aleck con artist named Max Mitchell who is forced to partner with a strait-laced cop to solve crimes in order to reduce her incarcerated father’s prison sentence. In a recent episode, Max meets up with a friend from her notorious past and the pair create havoc while still managing to nab the bad guys. The premise is goofy, sure, but there’s still something there that is sweet and compelling.

My mother, an inveterate and long-time listener of CBC Radio, puts it better than me:

“As a kid living on a farm, every day when we all gathered for lunch, we listened diligently to The Farm Family radio drama on CBC. It provided both entertainment and education to urban audiences about farm life. It followed the lives of a fictional farm family, offering insights into their daily routines and challenges. The show also served as a platform for agricultural extension services, promoting best practices and providing information to farmers. In our rural community, CBC radio was on in most people’s houses, all day, as it was in ours,” she told me.

“The Gillians was another CBC radio program focused on farmers, airing weekdays at noon from 1942 to 1972. This program also included segments on farm concerns, market information and educational tips, along with a fictional farm family and their neighbours.

“When I grew older and became a writer, CBC was always on in the background. I tuned into it when there was something I wanted to hear and go back to writing. I would go for coffee every morning to my neighbours and best friends, and Alan and I would discuss what the CBC had said and what we thought about it. When Peter Gzowski retired, we all gathered for coffee at our local restaurant and listened (and some wept) to his last show.

“Sunday mornings with the great documentaries CBC used to have, and then Sunday afternoon with Eleanor Wachtel, were sacrosanct hours in my life. In the last few years, CBC has turned to podcasts, rather than in-depth investigative documentaries, and I find them far less engaging. But CBC remains the background and backbone of my life as a writer. I am so glad it is always there.”

CBC was a portal, a means to access the outside world, channelled through a gentle, thoughtful Canadian approach.

The idea that it could cease to exist because of political ambitions — or worse, penny-pinching — fills me with rage.

I came across the following statement from economist John Maynard Keynes, interviewed on the BBC during the Second World War.

“Let us not submit to the vile doctrine of the 19th century that every enterprise must justify in pounds, shillings and pence of cash income… why should we not add in every substantial city the dignity of an ancient university or a European capital… an ample theatre, a concert hall, a dance fall, a gallery, cafés and so forth.

“Assuredly we can afford this and much more… We are immeasurably richer than our predecessors. It is not evident that some sophistry, some fallacy, governs our collective action if we are forced to be so much meaner than they in the embellishments of life.”

I would add a national broadcaster to Keynes’s list of cultural touchstones.

It doesn’t matter if the CBC is good or bad, it’s both. It is ours, and it is us.