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| Come to think of it, Mister Peabody does resemble Paul Martin Sr. |
Inside Television 519
Publication Date: 9-17-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn
I was reminded of something by a Facebook posting just a few minutes ago. It was time to write this column and I thought I’d just check the social networks to see what was new before going to the newswires to check the television networks. There was a link to a YouTube post of Bobby Gimby and the chorus singing Ca-Na-Da, the anthem of the 1967 Centennial. The comment was made on both Facebook and YouTube that this should be our national anthem.
Therefore Sherman, let’s you and I go with Mr. Peabody into the Wayback Machine and look at the past with a point to be made about the present.
That song was absolutely omnipresent that year, as was Centennial fever. Every community with half an idea did a Centennial public works project. In the city of Fort William, it was the Conservatory behind Chapples park. In Port Arthur it was - I guess you can guess - Centennial Park complete with the best toboggan run in the Lakehead (sic).
I remember that toboggan run well. I was nine, my grandfather took me to Centennial Park on a 1967 winter’s Sunday and we ran into people he knew. They had kids and a toboggan. I became a guest passenger on the voyage ... until the toboggan hit a lump and ascended into the air. Showing the agility of a Romanian Gymnast and the common sense of an anvil, I removed myself from the toboggan while in mid-flight only to find myself beneath said now descending object with an otherwise full load of screaming children. Who landed on my face. Whump. Therefore, my grandfather was left with the task of mopping up a bloody face - mine - and driving several laps around the cities while waiting for the child - still me - to stop screaming bloody murder before being returned to my mother.
So not all memories of that Centennial Year are positive ones. Although any event in life that doesn’t kill you or someone else and leaves you with a good story to tell is worth living. The point of all this is that as exhilarating and beautifully patriotic as the Vancouver Olympics proved to be, the giddy intoxication still runs second to the Centennial. The Centennial ran all year obviously, Expo 67 ran all spring through fall in Montreal, we were 100 years old, had a population of 20 million as the song reminded us, we were all grown up and for the first time felt kind of - cool.
Yes, it might have been Canada’s best year. We had a flag (okay, it was a compromise design that thrilled no one but, ehhhh, you get used to it), an anthem (which edged out The Maple Leaf Forever because of the latter’s reference to ‘Wolfe the dauntless hero’ which really didn’t play well in Quebec), and this Pierre Trudeau guy who had the swagger and style of a Kennedy but was very definitely a homegrown product.
We were building stuff: schools, infrastructures, industries. We stayed out of Vietnam and welcomed the draft dodgers. Our Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, had a deserved Nobel Peace Prize. The Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, while Prime Minister had passed an excellent Bill of Rights the equal of Trudeau’s later Charter of Rights although only binding on the Federal government. And Diefenbaker was a Tory. Can you imagine Stephen Harper doing that? me neither.
Even on television, every time you turned on the set you hit a classic. Chez Helene and The Friendly Giant for the kids, This Hour Has Seven Days for the intelligent, Tommy Hunter and Don Messer’s Jubilee for your toe-tapping family fun. And do not forget Wayne and Shuster. Never forget Wayne and Shuster.
But now? It’s not so much that no program, politician or presentation has truly captured the public imagination, it’s more that we seem to have lost an imagination to capture. We certainly had the fervour at the Winter Olympics but the follow-through seems as lost as a New Year’s Resolution.
It may well be that we’re just happy to be alive and somewhat thriving in the face of economic calamity all around us. But even the Great Depression left a legacy of the CBC, Air Canada and the origins of the modern social welfare state. We, well we play our cards very conservatively. In television, is there a single Canadian show produced today that you can say with a straight face will have a 50 year shelf life? With CBC being slowly asphyxiated by financial strangling, and CTV with Global combining to form America Lite, it is not likely that there will be such a show in the near future.
Perhaps that is the lesson to take from 1967. It really was ground up, community first, all those projects and events and songs. Ottawa supplied chunky cheques, no doubt about it, but money really doesn’t create happiness. People create happiness within themselves and share it with others.
And yes, i think every hockey game, movie and school day ought to start with Ca-Na-Da. At least all beginnings would begin with smiles. Be seeing you.
Publication Date: 9-17-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn
I was reminded of something by a Facebook posting just a few minutes ago. It was time to write this column and I thought I’d just check the social networks to see what was new before going to the newswires to check the television networks. There was a link to a YouTube post of Bobby Gimby and the chorus singing Ca-Na-Da, the anthem of the 1967 Centennial. The comment was made on both Facebook and YouTube that this should be our national anthem.
Therefore Sherman, let’s you and I go with Mr. Peabody into the Wayback Machine and look at the past with a point to be made about the present.
That song was absolutely omnipresent that year, as was Centennial fever. Every community with half an idea did a Centennial public works project. In the city of Fort William, it was the Conservatory behind Chapples park. In Port Arthur it was - I guess you can guess - Centennial Park complete with the best toboggan run in the Lakehead (sic).
I remember that toboggan run well. I was nine, my grandfather took me to Centennial Park on a 1967 winter’s Sunday and we ran into people he knew. They had kids and a toboggan. I became a guest passenger on the voyage ... until the toboggan hit a lump and ascended into the air. Showing the agility of a Romanian Gymnast and the common sense of an anvil, I removed myself from the toboggan while in mid-flight only to find myself beneath said now descending object with an otherwise full load of screaming children. Who landed on my face. Whump. Therefore, my grandfather was left with the task of mopping up a bloody face - mine - and driving several laps around the cities while waiting for the child - still me - to stop screaming bloody murder before being returned to my mother.
So not all memories of that Centennial Year are positive ones. Although any event in life that doesn’t kill you or someone else and leaves you with a good story to tell is worth living. The point of all this is that as exhilarating and beautifully patriotic as the Vancouver Olympics proved to be, the giddy intoxication still runs second to the Centennial. The Centennial ran all year obviously, Expo 67 ran all spring through fall in Montreal, we were 100 years old, had a population of 20 million as the song reminded us, we were all grown up and for the first time felt kind of - cool.
Yes, it might have been Canada’s best year. We had a flag (okay, it was a compromise design that thrilled no one but, ehhhh, you get used to it), an anthem (which edged out The Maple Leaf Forever because of the latter’s reference to ‘Wolfe the dauntless hero’ which really didn’t play well in Quebec), and this Pierre Trudeau guy who had the swagger and style of a Kennedy but was very definitely a homegrown product.
We were building stuff: schools, infrastructures, industries. We stayed out of Vietnam and welcomed the draft dodgers. Our Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, had a deserved Nobel Peace Prize. The Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, while Prime Minister had passed an excellent Bill of Rights the equal of Trudeau’s later Charter of Rights although only binding on the Federal government. And Diefenbaker was a Tory. Can you imagine Stephen Harper doing that? me neither.
Even on television, every time you turned on the set you hit a classic. Chez Helene and The Friendly Giant for the kids, This Hour Has Seven Days for the intelligent, Tommy Hunter and Don Messer’s Jubilee for your toe-tapping family fun. And do not forget Wayne and Shuster. Never forget Wayne and Shuster.
But now? It’s not so much that no program, politician or presentation has truly captured the public imagination, it’s more that we seem to have lost an imagination to capture. We certainly had the fervour at the Winter Olympics but the follow-through seems as lost as a New Year’s Resolution.
It may well be that we’re just happy to be alive and somewhat thriving in the face of economic calamity all around us. But even the Great Depression left a legacy of the CBC, Air Canada and the origins of the modern social welfare state. We, well we play our cards very conservatively. In television, is there a single Canadian show produced today that you can say with a straight face will have a 50 year shelf life? With CBC being slowly asphyxiated by financial strangling, and CTV with Global combining to form America Lite, it is not likely that there will be such a show in the near future.
Perhaps that is the lesson to take from 1967. It really was ground up, community first, all those projects and events and songs. Ottawa supplied chunky cheques, no doubt about it, but money really doesn’t create happiness. People create happiness within themselves and share it with others.
And yes, i think every hockey game, movie and school day ought to start with Ca-Na-Da. At least all beginnings would begin with smiles. Be seeing you.
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