Source : Our Schools / Our Selves

I'll admit it—my mom and dad got the last laugh.

I grew up in a CBC household. My mom credits Peter Gzowski with keeping her sane during the years she stayed home with her three kids—"he was the only one who talked to me like I was an adult," she explains. Dinner table conversation was conducted against the backdrop of the World at Six. We woke up to Fresh Air and Voice of the Pioneer on weekends. My brother, sister and I still bond over the theme songs from As it Happens. And one of our guilty geek-pleasures was the beeeep! at exactly 1:00 pm Eastern Standard Time (right before Air Farce on Sundays).

Every weekday morning I timed my run to the bus stop with the closing music for the eight o'clock news. Barbara Frum and Alan Maitland were at every dinner I ate. Dave Broadfoot, Don Ferguson and Luba Goy shared my lunch on Sundays.

So prevalent was CBC radio in my life that it was years before I actually figured out that if you turned that little dial on the radio—the one right beside the volume—you actually had access to other stations… stations that played music other than classical or jazz. And even—gasp!—commercials! On the radio! I honestly didn't know that such a thing existed until I was well into Grade 5, and then discovered it only by accident (we were up north and I was trying to find CBC on the radio—which is also when I discovered the whole point of the dial beside the volume).

There came a time when CBC lost some of its luster. Or rather, when it became painfully clear that normal teenagers did not listen to the news. And all those other radio stations suddenly took on a brand new significance. Thus began the period of my life when my siblings and I fought for the front seat in the car so we could control the radio selection.

But every so slowly, over the course of my time away from home at university, CBC radio regained its place in my life. Perhaps it had something to do with the feeling of returning home for holidays and summer vacation--somehow intrinsically linked with all those familiar theme songs and voices providing the background noise to conversations with my family. Maybe it was my ongoing feud with talk radio. Somehow, over the course of my 20s and into my 30s, I reaffirmed my status as a CBC junkie.

This status gained significance when I took time off from work this past summer after my daughter was born. Every morning we sat down on the couch so she could have her breakfast and I could listen to The Current before she had her nap.

When the last lockout happened I—no joke—was a mess. Because my household, along with many other CBC devotees, refused to cross even the electronic picket line, my awareness of the world around me suddenly became limited to progressive websites (themselves no longer able to access CBC programming). Sure, I could buy the newspaper on our afternoon walks--but there was no guarantee I'd be able to find time to read it. When my partner returned from work I wasn't certain what I was happiest about—being able to finally go to the washroom without having to sprint back to rejoin my indignant daughter, or having access to his knowledge of what had happened that day.

When a settlement was finally reached and CBC original programming resumed, I felt like a kid in a candy store. Not only did we listen to The Current in the mornings, we scheduled our afternoon walks so we could be home in time to watch Don Newman's Politics (hey, we were gearing up for an election). Balance was restored—in my universe anyway. Once again I felt knowledgeable about the world around me—the political, the cultural, the local, the national and the international. I felt—all right, I'll say it—more sane. More mentally active. Better equipped and more thoughtful. I finally knew exactly what my mom had been talking about, and shared her gratitude for a national public broadcaster that treated her like an adult and kept her current and up-to-date and aware.

So this is why I take the Conservative government's past and current comments about the CBC very personally. MP Jim Abbott (assistant to Heritage Minister Bev Oda) has suggested
"the facts do not support the claim" that the CBC is essential, and recommended in 2003 in his role in Opposition that CBC television be "commercialized." Minister Oda's proposed sweeping review of the CBC will be, according to her director of communications, about making sure that that money for CBC "is well-spent and that we get good value for it."

Value? I can think of few things more valuable than an educated populace aware if its surroundings and of the political decisions being made at all levels that affect all or any of us. How valuable is it that the experiences of a woman in Nunavut are brought into the homes of people in Toronto or Calgary? Or that the daily lives of people in war-torn Iraq or Afghanistan are made real to schoolchildren in Saskatchewan? And, love or hate Rex Murphy, how many valuable family conversations—or arguments—spring from a single airing of Cross Country Checkup?

If anything, we need more of this programming, not less. We need a network that includes all Canadians in all communities—so that yes, we can all hear about what's going on in Toronto or Ottawa—but so that Torontonians can hear about what's happening in Moose Jaw or Come By Chance. And so people in Moose Jaw and Come By Chance can hear about what's happening in their own communities too—not just what's happening in larger cities. And not just which kid from which small town has made it on CanCon's version of a touque superimposed on the Idol or Next Top Model franchises--Canada's American Idol or Canada's America's Next Top Model--while product placement abounds.

My mom tells me with absolute seriousness that she and my dad consider a love for the CBC one of the gifts they have given their kids. And as I'm trying to decide what sort of a world I want my daughter to grow up in—what I want to make sure she has in her life (only to reject in her teenage years and then return to later when she realizes that her parents were right all along) this gift becomes even more significant.

© Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - Our Schools / Our Selves