In Rural Canada, CBC Brought Us the World

[Oscar]

In Rural Canada, CBC Brought Us the World

[ https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2025/04/11/R ... ign=140425 ]

QUOTE: "It sparked the careers of many artists. Now as the election nears, we risk losing it."

Dorothy Woodend - April 11, 2025 - The Tyee

EXCERPT: "Lam sums it up thusly: “The CBC is the glue that we need to keep our communities together, interested, invested and caring for each other.”

“Right now, we’re at a time when we need everything to bring us back together. We don’t need this rhetoric of hate towards each other. We don’t need this greater push to reduce accessibility or reduce diversity — if anything, we need more of that right now. I believe the CBC represents Canada and it represents this beautiful mosaic of people across the country.” . . .

CBC was a portal, a means to access the outside world, channelled through a gentle, thoughtful Canadian approach.

The idea that it could cease to exist because of political ambitions — or worse, penny-pinching — fills me with rage.

I came across the following statement from economist John Maynard Keynes, interviewed on the BBC during the Second World War.

“Let us not submit to the vile doctrine of the 19th century that every enterprise must justify in pounds, shillings and pence of cash income… why should we not add in every substantial city the dignity of an ancient university or a European capital… an ample theatre, a concert hall, a dance fall, a gallery, cafés and so forth.

“Assuredly we can afford this and much more… We are immeasurably richer than our predecessors. It is not evident that some sophistry, some fallacy, governs our collective action if we are forced to be so much meaner than they in the embellishments of life.”

I would add a national broadcaster to Keynes’s list of cultural touchstones.

It doesn’t matter if the CBC is good or bad, it’s both. It is ours, and it is us."