who to blame

While searching the database for film records at work, I stumbled upon some Friendly Giant records from 1978. The record that stood out had poetry by Jerome, the Friendly Giant reading from a book, and Rusty playing harp. Made me wonder how formative CBC was to me with that kind of highbrow exposure.

We watched a lot of CBC when I was a kid. When I was home with a 24-hour flu, my mom let me watch morning CBC until noon, at which time I could watch American Sesame Street on the PBS station from Detroit (their after school spot) and drift off to sleep with flat gingerale on the coffee table beside the couch. Saturday afternoons involved a bath and sitting with my dad during Hockey Night in Canada while our hair dried and we waited for dinner. I loved the home repair show led by a woman on a soundstage called Do It For Yourself, the only how-to show I'd ever seen that didn't have a woman in front of a stove or ironing board. I used to tape record songs from Good Rockin' Tonite and Video Hits to make mixtapes, and later did the same when we got our VCR. On our annual Christmas pilgrimage to visit my grandparents in Edmonton, my sister and I would wait for songs we knew to play on the radio, always excited when Bob & Doug McKenzie's "12 Days of Christmas" or Barry Manilow's "Let's Hang On" came on so we could sing along.

I suspect the same is true of my friends. A large number were either big CBC viewers/listeners when they were kids, or really are now. How different would we be without that exposure?

But then I realise that those people all around me. People who don't know what it's like to finally FINALLY get a full recording of the best song of the week on cassette, to hear Knowlton Nash's voice, to feel the rush of learning new French words in a town with only one French speaker so they could try it on him. I know these people are around me because they turn up their noses when I mention where I work. "Oh, I never watch/listen to the CBC. There's never anything good on it," they say. I immediately know we have nothing in common.

Isolationism forces you to be resourceful and to absorb whatever you can get. The CBC is what I absorbed. And I'm pretty protective of it when people diss it.

Some days I can't even believe I get to work there. Because it's kind of awesome.