Bill Richardson - a friendly face from the former Mother Corporation

A lot of  Hot Air on the CBC - A Vanishing Act

William Richardson & our Shameful CBC 

An open letter to CBC's Catherine Tait 

The Densification of Paul Merrick's CBC

Catherine Tait is the head honcho of the CBC. She happens to live in the Boerum Hill neighbourhood of Brooklyn. Does anybody know what she does? Has she ever visited Vancouver? If she has I never found out.

A couple of years ago, Telus got rid of its Canadian servers and adopted and now uses Google servers. Anywhere else in the world, that a national communications company depends on foreign servers, would be a scandal. Telus bought up ADT a couple of years ago. When I have a problem and I call the number a woman usually answers and she asks me, “What is your zip code?”

I drink coffee at J.J. Bean as it is North Vancouver owned. I never go to Starbucks. I do not buy books from Abe Books as it is owned by Amazon. I never buy anything on line that involves Amazon or their delivery.

I guess that this Argie, at age 80, is no longer interested in driving to Seattle (as I used to do with my Rosemary) to buy a Pendleton. I am a Canadian and I feel Canadian.

My first job as a photographer in Vancouver (we arrived from Mexico in 1975) was in 1977 when Radio Canada TV was coming on the air. They wanted station ID pictures that were exclusively theirs and not taken by the English side of the corporation. After that I was hired by the English CBC and worked there for many years.

It may have been sometime around 1977 that I went home and told Rosemary, “Today, thanks to the CBC I have found out that the province is pronounced nefun-land. I almost feel Canadian.”

I have often wondered the origin of the epithet (a nice one at that) The Mother Corp.

The expression was explained by my longtime friend Michael Varga, who in his time was the best hockey cameraman in Canada (making him the best in the world). He told me that when he started working in 1973 at the old Vancouver CBC location on Georgia he felt protected and nurtured in his job. From my job as a rental agent for Tilden Rent-A-Car, on Alberni beginning in 1975, I was constantly dealing with CBC folks who rented our station wagons. I asked them if they liked their jobs and they invariably smiled. I was jealous.

It was as a stills photographer at CBC variety shows and shooting their announcers for magazines that I honed my talent in being a good commercial photographer. The CBC was my very own Mother Corp.

But this March 2023 with the elimination of Hot Air all that remains that interests me is CBC Ideas, About Time with Tom Allen, Reclaimed and (yes!) the Debaters.

Before Lister Sinclair died, I sent him an email telling him that his CBC Ideas needed some Debaters humour. He answered me agreeing with me!

I love Gloria Macarenko’s radio voice. But Barbara Budd is gone. There are few good voices left.

With print journalism in Vancouver being moribund if not dead and the on-line cultural magazines like Stir and Pancouver not stirring the pot we have The Tyee which does have investigative journalism and opinion pieces. The pickings are few as the audience is now fractured.

There is one simple solution. What organization does not depend on selling ads? That has to be the CBC. Why can they not in Vancouver and nationally have radio and TV programs with a couple of hours a week featuring critics, musician, artists, dancers, actors, producers, architecture experts, etc?

They could do it. Is there a will? I have been told by the few I know that work still at the CBC that producers are young and don’t know any better. And I have been told that the corporation makes decisions from Toronto.

My question is this one. If Pierre Poilivre manages to become Prime Minister (he has promised to defund the CBC) he will not have to defund the CBC as it will be a corporation in which its children have no mother.

Mrs. Catherine Tait what are you going to do about this situation that is getting worse every day?