Source : The Ottawa Sun

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things ...."

The time has come to hive off the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to private broadcasting, save almost a billion dollars a year and recoup billions from the sale of prime downtown real estate and state-of-the-art electronic equipment.

Rich legacy

The CBC is long past its shelf life. It was once a necessary and powerful instrument in stitching a growing nation together but that role has been fulfilled. As a public broadcaster, the CBC leaves a rich legacy but today its outlets are just faces in a crowded field.

Friends of the CBC will disagree with this assessment but they cannot deny that the Corporation's finest years are behind it.

War correspondent Matthew Halton's reports from the front are unequalled - even by Edward R. Murrow's stirring broadcasts.

Former CJOH pundit Peter Stursberg's reporting from North Africa is memorable. Peter was first to broadcast the anthem of the Afrika Korps, Lili Marlene, to listeners in North America.

J. Frank Willis mesmerized a nation with his 1936 live radio reports from the Moose River, N.S., gold mining disaster when three men were trapped 150-feet down for six days.

Kingsley Brown Jr.'s professionalism shone through in his live televised reports from two 1950s' coal mining catastrophes in Springhill, Nova Scotia.

Rhodes Scholar James M. Minifie's carefully crafted prose was the envy of his competitors.

Norman Depoe, was a giant among newsmen and totally fearless in his on-camera clashes with Diefenbaker.

Norman was also a legend in the National Press Club, located on Elgin St. alongside the Cenotaph. His capacity for gin and tonic was awesome but the show always went on.

Minutes before the 11 p.m. national news, Norman summoned a taxi, which drove him around Confederation Square and deposited him at the front door of the Chateau Laurier. He took an elevator to the unmanned remote studio on the 7th floor and punched in with a news director at the CBC studios on Lanark Ave.

Squared away

Norman squared himself away, shook himself and went live to the nation. Only his closest associates knew he was hammered.

Save for a few exceptions, the CBC was largely an entertainment medium and launched the zany comedy of Wayne and Shuster and Max Ferguson's Rawhide, the music careers of Anne Murray, Don Messer, Gisele Mackenzie and Robert Goulet and acting and directing opportunities for Kate Reid, Leslie Nielsen, Norm Jewison, Fletcher Markle, Genevieve Bujold, Paul Almond, John Vernon and Gordon Pinsent.

CBC Television was also largely responsible for propelling Diefenbaker into the Prime Minister's Office -- and earning his undying enmity along the way. But, the CBC was the only TV network in existence then and The Chief had to bite his tongue.

He was humiliated in 1957 and, again in 1958, when the CBC forced him to fly from Prince Albert to a TV station in Saskatoon on election nights to speak to Canadians on national TV.

Windowless basement

When he commanded 208 seats in the Commons, he agreed to do a live TV interview in Montreal. He was led to a windowless basement studio constructed of cinder blocks. Minutes before airtime, a studio employee tacked a Navaho blanket to the wall as a "set decoration."

Dief was livid!

The CBC had one foot in a grave and the other on a banana peel that day.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Canadians were a captive audience. The network provided free-time 15-minute slots live in prime time. The program was "The Nation's Business" and it aired at 7.00 p.m. Everyone watched because there were no other channels.

I accompanied Dief to Lanark Avenue one evening and, except for a receptionist, the lobby was bare.

No one to greet the Prime Minister of Canada?

He blew his cork.

The next time we went out there was a receiving line: CBC President Alphonse Ouimet, senior Ottawa director Peter Meggs, executives Reeves Haggan and Dennis Townsend and directors Cam Graham, Michael Hindsmith and Patrick Watson.

When the red lights atop the cameras went on, Dief was in command. At one point in every telecast, he would shoot his cuffs, lean forward and appear to address each and every Canadian personally. His puppeteer, Allister Grosart, always nudged me and said:

"Here it comes! Here's his come to Jesus bit!"

Carrying letter

Much later, Dalton Camp told me The Chief wanted me to fly to Montreal to meet Alphonse Ouimet's BOAC flight from Heathrow. He said Ouimet was carrying a letter for Grattan O'Leary from High Commissioner George Drew.

I flew back to Ottawa with the letter. Dalton and Flora MacDonald treated the envelope as if it were radioactive. Flora locked it away in a filing cabinet.

The letter was the bogus "Dear Mike" letter, allegedly from U.S. Ambassador W. Walton Butterworth to Opposition Leader Lester B. Pearson, pushing nuclear tips for Canada's Bomarc missiles.

Grattan O'Leary, Gordon Churchill, Dalton and Flora argued that the letter be deep-sixed but Diefenbaker was adamant it be released. He got his way but paid the price when the letter was exposed as a fake paste-up.

Alphonse Ouimet never knew he was the unwitting courier.

But, all that was yesterday -- many years ago.

What has the CBC done lately except act as a cash cow for mediocre on-air personalities out of Toronto -- "the same old bunch" as Dief would call them.

Few countries, the United States included, support a public broadcasting system with public funding.

The CBC's time has come and gone and it should go too and leave the airwaves to private broadcasters.

© The Ottawa Sun