“When the colour of the night
And all the smoke for one life
Gives way to shaky movements
Improvisational skills
A forest of whispering speakers
Let's swear that we will
Get with the times
In a current health to stay
Let's get friendship right
Get life day-to-day”
“IT’S A GOOD LIFE If You Don’t Weaken” may be one of the few wonderful Tragically Hip songs the band left tucked under Gord Downie’s magic hat on Saturday night. But the transcendent nature of the show from Kingston was rife with other epiphanies, not the least of which concerns a late-breaking story on our CBC.
We spend so much time today – too much, for my liking – talking all things “digital.” I come by this weariness honestly, having heard many of the same arguments, the same hyperbole, about the endless promise and world-supplanting power of the internet when I covered the beat for Citytv’s Media Television, way back in 1993.
Yet, here we were, not quite Ahead By a Century, but a quarter of that… unified, glued together, celebrating, mourning and singing along as one with the squarest, least ‘on fleek’ medium imaginable – a live concert broadcast free, via our over-the-air public broadcaster.
But what a broadcast. Not sponsored. Not promo’d breathlessly; counted-down to with coiffed seriousness and pomp. No. Instead, CBC chose a low-key route that allowed the moment and emotion to speak for itself. Ron Maclean and Canadian athletes from the roof of the Canadian Consulate in Rio provided the intro and extro, with tears and heartfelt, unrehearsed words. No commercials. No host prattle. No bleeps for salty language.
“This was public broadcasting at its most basic. Its most important. Its most raw.”
In its restraint, the decision makers at CBC and concert production company Insight Productions proved at once how silly much of the “debate” around the CBC has been these past few years. This was public broadcasting at its most basic. Its most important. Its most raw.
It made me want more.
For the last decade at least, every move or twitch by our lumbering public broadcaster has been met by a furious phalanx of CBC Haters. They fulminate and fret, filling the comment sections of the Globe and Mail, CBC, and anywhere else they can, really.
They were silent last night. Instead, wondrously, online and on Twitter there was a pure outpouring, and an even purer Canadian offshoot – people not part of the “in” group trying to understand, to appreciate, and connect with their fellow Canadians. I saw at least a dozen messages from people – younger, diverse, who were not on the Hip train, asking for suggestions of where they could start to understand this phenomenon. They wanted to get it. They wanted to connect to Canada. After months of watching the USA descend into base camps of hysteria and racism, it was heartening in a way I didn’t expect. More proof that maybe Canadian values do follow a different trajectory.
In our vast, sparsely populated country, a land with such variation in experience, geography – even language – we have not outgrown our need for an instrument that can – at crucial times – knit us together. CBC is that vehicle. For the thirty-odd dollars we pay in taxes for it every year, we gain a powerful instrument to help us connect. It’s time we recognized that and took steps to make that resonant and relevant for the 21st century.
The challenges are enormous. CBC has been under siege for so long, it’s become a calcified state full of fearful orthodoxies, battling fiefdoms, and a mission statement that strains for relevance in a universe of abundant choice.
But there are obvious places to start. A board populated by lawyers, cutters, hacks and politicos has to go. A revitalization cannot happen under a group designed to dismantle, as the mostly Conservative-appointed CBC board was.
Second, the trolls, for all their obnoxiousness, do have a point. There’s something fundamentally fusty and paternalistic about CBC’s mission. All that stuff about knitting the Canadian identity together comes from another time, and is misguided in today’s world. There is no “Canadian Identity.” There are a million variations. A riot of colours, views, experiences, and realities – none of which require the mediation of a bureaucratic minder.
To take the example with which I’m most personally familiar – scripted drama – it’s instructive to maybe look toward the Scandinavians and their “One Vision” model. A group of nations, similar in geography but distinct culturally, vastly smaller than us, have managed to put out thrilling, compelling and relevant dramas that get watched and re-made around the world.
“These moves will never come from a place of caution and fear. They will not come from executives worried that any bold move will mean criticism and scandal. They will not come from departments warring over diminishing resources, and another round of consultant reports.”
How did they do it? By putting their creative people at the centre. Not the bureaucrats, not the executives, and certainly not the politicians. Under “One Vision,” their showrunners are charged with coming up with the stories, saying only that they must have something to say, and must somehow reflect a Scandinavian point of view. That’s it. Notes are not proscriptive. They amount to, “what is it you are trying to say here, and how can you say it clearly and strongly?”
That is a game-changer. But then again, not so far from watching the frontman of a Kingston bar band evolve to mine deep stories and themes that drill down into the Canadian psyche. The unfettered, unfiltered, unquestionably weird, but mostly UNMEDDLED mind of Gordon Downie is what made him our unofficial poet laureate.
Imagine a CBC where News is allowed to be news. Where arts programs that stretch boundaries like my friend Grant Harvey’s wonderful adaptation of k.d. lang’s “Ballelujah” are allowed to thrive. Imagine documentaries that answer Downie’s charge from the stage last night and allow us to see the true story of the North we’ve been “trained to ignore” all these years. Imagine dramas that connect, like Heartland and Murdoch do now, but with the daring sweep of premium cable. Imagine a Malcolm Gladwell that doesn't have to publish and catch the attention of The New Yorker before Toronto mandarins take him seriously.
These moves will never come from a place of caution and fear. They will not come from executives worried that any bold move will mean criticism and scandal. They will not come from departments warring over diminishing resources, and another round of consultant reports.
They will come from our Rick Mercers, our empowered showrunners, our smart journalists and our chronically over-managed producers in Calgary, Vancouver, Halifax – insert your city here – who sometimes struggle with two and three levels of management.
It will come from letting weirdoes like Gord Downie fly their Canadian freak flags higher than we ever dreamed possible.
“Make creatives central to that conversation: Artists, journalists, dramatists, novelists and lyricists.”
And yes, it will come too, from digital-up projects that don’t necessarily start with TV. The fine work of the team at CBC Music. The innovative digital podcasts like Someone Knows Something. Just because I’m tired of having digital hog all the oxygen doesn’t mean I don’t believe it’s central to the future.
The common denominator in all of this is the ability to tell Canadian stories. And by that I don’t mean maple leaves and hockey cards – not necessarily. I mean the unvarnished, unfiltered, unmediated stuff.
For too long, Canada’s harsh climate has mirrored its treatment of its artists and storytellers. We are beset on all sides – by those who say we’re not good enough, that we are welfare cases, that we’re secret champagne elitists. We toil at the caprice of CRTC bureaucrats, funding agency quants, imperious arts executives, indifferent journalists.
It can all be better. That first-person tale from the Albertan who survived the Fort Mac fire; The girl who traced the Skagway to Dawson City gold route; the allophone pinging back and forth between French and English in Montreal, the rapper from St. James Town, the author from Cape Breton, and the next Gord Downie walking down George Street in St. John’s with a mess of jumbled lyrics in his head. I want to hear them all. I want to see them on my CBC.
So Minister Joly – Heritage Department, Prime Minister Trudeau – this is your charge now. You’ve seen what a strong national broadcaster can do for us. And right now, you’re contemplating what it should be for the future. Make creatives central to that conversation: Artists, journalists, dramatists, novelists and lyricists. Creative entrepreneurs who heretofore have been buried under the dross of reports and official presentations and agency mission statements and CRTC “calls-for-comments-that-support-the-thing-we’ve-already-decided-to-do.” Sweep all that away. Let’s get it right this time.
Gord Downie and his compatriots have given us a gift. So let’s go where we’re needed, CBC. And find some way to grow.
Denis McGrath is one of those pushy American-born Canadians, a writer originally from New York City. He experienced his most Canadian-feeling moment last year, reading viewer reactions to his Dieppe-themed episode of XCOMPANY. Other credits include CBC's THE BORDER and INSECURITY, as well as episodes of CONTINUUM, BITTEN, LESS THAN KIND, and the miniseries ACROSS THE RIVER TO MOTOR CITY, for which he won a Canadian Screenwriting Award. Denis has contributed to CBC Radio, blogged about Canadian TV daily for five years at heywriterboy.blogspot.com, and taught at Ryerson University. He currently serves on the National Council of the Writers Guild of Canada, who have neither endorsed or reviewed this piece. He first saw The Hip in '89. Ironically, Denis is currently developing a series for one of CBC's competitors.
Photo by Dave Bastedo, Live Nation.
