I'm still writing

Welcome to my new Substack

Introduction

I have been enjoying this new world of publishing for some time now as I look forward to the worldview of Robert Reich, the insights of Max Fawcett and the old school stories of Garrison Keillor.  I have no illusions.  I know that I write for the same reason I sing…joy.

So, I think I may step up to the plate into this Substack thing and take a few swings.

The writing bug started over forty years ago in a popular Chinese café in Saskatchewan.  Coffee row ranting led to a direct challenge.  I was going on about the lack of arts coverage in our local newspaper.  The telephone lineman dared me to cross the street and suggest to them that I could write a column with the sole purpose of balancing the coverage around arts and sports.

Jacked up on caffeine, I took up his offer.

For some crazy reason the editor took me up on my bid and for a number of years I became an amateur newspaper columnist.  I have to say it was a thrill to see your thoughts and words in old fashioned ink.  Over the years, I then got to put in a little time in the freelance outfield but spent a lot of time on the bench as well.

I had moments like the time I got a press pass into the G-7 conference in Toronto and sat a few feet from Reagan and Thatcher, but the story ended up on the floor.

To pay the bills and put some food on the table for fifty years I was a frontline public servant, working for local governments, First Nation governments as well as both provincial and federal governments.  I became a very proud public servant and an advocate for the importance of making our public services the hallmark of the best of democracy.

And I wrote there as well…I wrote in my work and I wrote about the work.  In my first book,  I imagined the advice that a young public servant might need from an elder.  Bureaucratically Incorrect…letters to a young public servant, actually became a Canadian best seller.

I spent my career as a frontline leadership and engagement practitioner and have continued to write about what that means (Handcrafted Leadership…the art and craft of building engaged workplaces and communities).

I have always felt the pull of the arts and as an amateur potter and musician, I developed an appreciation for the arts as a cornerstone of a healthy culture, good business and important public policy.

It has also been a source of quirky stories (my five minutes with Leonard Cohen).

I have lived the hippy life in the country and now live in a vibrant inner-city village and I am totally fascinated with our stories of living with the growing pains of rural and urban life.

So, this modest little Substack has no ambition other than to keep the writer connected to his community, find a few new friends and to give those everyday stories and thoughts a voice.  The writing is purely the writer’s own opinion. 

My first piece is connected to this new approach to writing. As I try Substack out, I have decided to write about the so-called legacy media. I have chosen to write about my own respectful history with the CBC.

Welcome to Stories from the Ordinary…I would love to hear your story and thoughts.

Thirty-three Bucks or Bust

In the interest of a less divided Canada I am stepping into my own CBC thirty-three-dollar challenge.  Let me give you the skinny…

As I have acknowledged in the introduction to this Substack, I am not an expert, perhaps not even competent to wade in on the subject of the CBC and public broadcasting but I do have a little story or two.

I am maybe fourteen and my dad asks me to help him install a water heater across town.  I am very into it.  We get in the truck and I immediately reach for the radio to get a little rock and roll fitting to my mood.

Like a ball peen hammer, my dad’s big callused hand grabbed the knobs and immediately turned Jerry Lee Lewis back into Igor Stravinsky.  “Leave that dial on Watrous,” he barked.  That day I learned that plumbing truck had travelled all over the province of Saskatchewan but the radio never left Watrous.

Now, Watrous is a small town known for three things…a salt water healing spa, a huge dancehall with the last sprung horsehair floor and the long-time home of the provincial CBC transmitter.  I have enjoyed all three.

My dad’s love of CBC was to me, a bit peculiar.  He was a tough guy; a classic blue-collar man and it was hard to connect him with radio that featured lectures and classical music. 

I loved radio so I respected his choice but later that night, tucked into my bed, I would dial up on my hand built crystal radio, the local radio station playing rock and roll.  It was on a late-night disc jockey show wonderfully called Spins and Needles.  I listened on a set of army surplus headphones slipped inside my pillow.  Early radio in my life always felt, for me, a little like contraband.

We also had a big stand-up radio with shortwave that I would curl up behind and in the warm glow of those glowing tubes, eat crackers and peanut butter while listening to Our Miss Brooks and Jack Benny.

Television showed up in our little town when I was nine.  We thought the radio might be history but it was still on top of the fridge, in the car and soon on the beach, with this new little model called the transistor.

Our family only got the one channel of CBC but we all fell pretty hard for The Friendly Giant, Front Page Challenge and Country Hoedown.  CBC now had dad’s heart on the visual side and on the Canadian front. 

CBC lived in our home. 

Grown up, we re-discovered radio as a young family and after putting the kids to bed, enjoying tea and toast, we quietly listened to Ideas in the evening and Gzowski in the morning.  I often think that CBC became our ticket to a Master’s Degree in Canadian Studies.

Over the years, I tried my hand at freelance writing and I did some commentary work for CBC Radio.  My hero was Arthur Black and I was encouraged to listen closely and learn from him.  It was a great treat when CBC sent me on a weekend workshop to learn how to better write for radio.  It continues to be one of the best workshops I ever attended and I became hooked on the art of focused storytelling.

In 1969, on my first teaching assignment in Churchill Manitoba, we hung out some with Peter Mansbridge and enjoyed pranking him with a fake cancellation (Churchill Metaphysical Society) during a whiteout.

Later in my career, Peter Gzowski got me fired. 

It’s a long story for another time but I had agreed to go on his show to discuss a controversial issue.  Things went a little south.  A few years later I met Peter in the old Jarvis Street headquarters and had a fine visit and a sweet tour.  He got a bigger kick out of my firing that I did.

How cool to actually meet your broadcast heroes.

So, I am a fan, no…more than a fan. 

I am the son and grandson of men who put their life on the line for the preservation of democracy.  I still think democracy is a leading contender for how a country might choose to govern itself and I know there are fewer democratic nations in the world now than there were after the war.  There should be more and I fear democracy is truly is decline in the world.

I also know that most successful democracies have robust public broadcasters and I am fully aware that populist, nationalistic and autocratic countries invariably target public journalism.

So even though 75% of Canadians still want the CBC it is a bit unsettling that 25% don’t…and that includes the angry fellow who might become our next Prime Minister.  He got a rousing ovation recently calling for the dismantling of the broadcaster.

Of course, us CBC enthusiasts have our own hard questions…

• What happened to seeing all the poor and suffering through one big unifying lens instead many differences…perhaps the identity pressures have skewed some programming emphasis.

• What happened to the brave journalists who asked hard questions of everyone?

• Like my dad’s church that lost him when they put the rockers performing on stage and stopped congregational singing in order to get the youth, maybe the Mother Corp could throw us old-timers a bone now and then on the culture side.  This youth obsession reminds me again of my father who did not indulge the young me in my emerging tastes but challenged me to up my game.

• I wish CBC television producers would stop looking to America for television inspiration and start to look to cultural icons like the BBC.  Have you seen The Repair Shop (the old man would have loved it) or The Great Pottery Throwdown (I would love it).

I often wonder if we could also find a way to help young listeners and viewers to understand the difference between hard news, analysis and opinion.  It seems there is a lot of confusion out there about the difference between facts and opinion. 

One more thing…full disclosure.  I am a long time now retired public servant and I know our democratic institutions need some repair like our infrastructure.  You don’t get rid of a bridge because it is falling apart.  You just repair it.  But when our democratic and public good institutions need repair, there is often today, a call to tear them down. I am heartbroken to see many Canadians, who if given the chance would choose to tear down our “common good” institutions like public health, public education, public safety and public broadcasting.  They are all easily fixable and as we struggle to keep our democracy out of the Intensive Care Unit, I figure I might do at least one positive, real thing besides beaking off.

I am brand new to this Substack thing.  I subscribe to a few.  I notice that many are charging for their work and I fully agree and support them.  Some are being supported at a rate of fifty to a hundred dollars a year for a subscription.  I fully support that because they are experts and deserve it and need it to stay above water.

Excellent.

However, I just discovered that I am paying a whopping $33.00 per year for the whole CBC package.  Coast to coast, eight indigenous languages television, internet, radio and morning show mugs.

Are you kidding me?  

I get this whole journalism package with professional journalists, fact checker and editors (not punks in a basement) for thirty-three bucks a year while many of us willingly pay fifty bucks a year for a fine (but only one) Substack opinion column writer. 

Coast to coast, language to language, culture to culture, heart to heart and citizen to citizen…for thirty-three bucks a year.

So, I am doubling down. Today I will send another thirty-three bucks to the CBC in the spirit of a bargain too good to pass up.

Just another story from the ordinary.