Going through the alphabet...

Assorted items are cluttering up my mental desk of late. I think it's time to purge. To wit:

CBC

My feelings about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are decidedly mixed. They can be summed up in four words: radio good, TV bad.
CBC Radio is great. I may take issue with their constant search for minorities to profile--it's the Toronto Star in audio form!--but the documentaries, the music, the news, the music, the variety, and, oh, yes, the music, make listening to the radio a civilizing, edifying experience. My favourite programs include Richardson's Roundup, Definitely Not The Opera, and the Vinyl Cafe. What these share (and what separates CBC from most anything else on the dial) is near-total unpredictability, something I find exhilarating.
CBC Radio is also unifying. They do a national call-in called Cross-Country Checkup. Its host, Rex Murphy, seems truly interested in what listeners have to say. (When our local talk-jock on CKGL wants your opinion, he'll give it to you). Through programs like this, I have heard Canadians from all corners of the country and all walks of life sound off on things that concern them. Through newscasts, I have learned of things that might be concerning my fellow Canadians tomorrow.
The ever-present anti-American bias sometimes pisses me off. But then, that bias usually reflects the considered opinion of a majority of Canadians (including, sometimes, myself!)

CBC television is a different kettle of fish entirely.
For one thing, nobody watches it. (My apologies to Corner Gas fans...just what do you find so funny about that show, anyway?) The only other hit CBC has on its hands is Hockey Night In Canada...something I'd just as soon watch on TSN. From there, it all goes downhill in a hurry. Even the venerable old National gets its anchor handed to it every night by CTV.
For another, CBC-Television can't seem to make up its mind: is it a public broadcaster or a private one? If the former, why all the commercials? If the latter, why the huge waste of tax dollars?
The head of CBC routinely tells us it's "not about the ratings", as most of their fomer ratings 'powerhouses' (a powerhouse in Canada means more than ten people watch the show...while they're awake) grow more and more stale. The Royal Canadian Air Farce, for example, used to be edgy and laugh-out-loud funny. For years now, it's been hit and miss, mostly miss. And given a choice between CSI: Timbuktu and Da Vinci's Inquest, sixty-three out of sixty-four Canadians will tune in Da Vinci just long enough to discover Dan Brown didn't write it.
In the ever-evolving 500-channel universe, CBC-Television is a brown dwarf. Sad to say, since the younger generation increasingly has no time for radio, CBC-Radio may just follow it into a black hole.

G.G.

Let me first say that I have never met Michaelle Jean, our newest Governor General, and therefore have no idea what sort of person she is. I have nothing against the woman personally; having an ardent Quebec separatist for a husband shouldn't really detract from whatever it is Jean brings to whatever it is Governors-General do.
Count me amongst the Canadian Republicans--those who believe it's long past time to throw off the British yoke. Does it not seem odd that our head of state lives and works an ocean away? In this increasingly multicultural country (and we've all been trained by the CBC to accept this as a Good Thing), how does it serve us to bow down, even hypothetically, to Britain?
Adrienne Clarkson showed us just what it was Governors-General are good for: flinging around prodigious amounts of tax dollars. If you're going to waste a few million dollars, why not at least throw it into the maw of the health care monster? Then at least people will believe it will accomplish something.
All that said, if we absolutely have to have a Governor General, if the country will fall apart without one, couldn't it at least be someone who is a citizen of Canada, only? It seems strange to have a dual citizen of France representing the British Crown. Vaguely treasonous.


RRR

The fabled three Rs, only one of which begins with R, an example of irony worthy of Alanis, no?
Gerard Kennedy, our provincial education minister and an N-dipper in Grit clothing, believes that high school students have it rough. Due to a 45% increase in dropout rates that accompanied the Mike Harris-era curriculum, Kennedy wants to dumb down our high schools.
Memo to Mr. Food Bank: Ontario is still producing high school graduates who are functionally illiterate; who have no idea how to parse a sentence or even what "parse a sentence" means; who can't do simple arithmetic without the use of a machine. Robert Heinlein, in his excellent collection Expanded Universe, does a fine job of arguing that a public school graduate, ca. 1900, was better-educated than many of today's high school grads. Thanks to the insane policy that keeps students plowing through the system in spite of failing grades (the better to spare their self-esteem), it's possible to graduate high school with a grade nine or ten education, such as that may be.
The absolute last thing we need is an easier curriculum. If anything, it should be harder still. Every effort should be made to keep students ahead of the curve, of course, but it should also be recognized that some will fall behind, that some people's talents are not academic in nature.

That'll be my next blog: how to reform the educational system. Wait for it.