I was born and raised in Canada, but didn’t start becoming Canadian till I was 38. I didn’t even know I wasn’t Canadian till the process of change was well underway. And one Canadian institution was almost entirely responsible.
Calgary, December, 1994. I’d never heard of the Huron Carol concerts, but some friends took me that year. They were excited because the evening would be hosted by some guy named Peter Gzowski. I’d never heard of him either. Nevertheless, I loved the entire wonderful evening. And to my joy, that guy – Peter Gzowski – told us that parts of the concert would be broadcast the next morning, between nine and noon, on some CBC radio program he hosted. So at work the next morning, at nine a.m., I put on my Walkman and went looking for his program.
I recognized his friendly, comfortable voice right away. His program was called "Morningside." It turned out I had to wait for hour three to hear the concert, but I decided to stick around for the first two hours as well, so I wouldn't forget. Of such small decisions come momentous results. It still gives me goosebumps, to think of it.
The first rumblings of my Great Conversion began almost immediately. I vaguely remember a segment featuring some people from Quebec who had a unique way of teaching other Canadians about their culture: inviting them for dinner. They would invite people from other parts of Canada to visit them in Quebec, to meet some real people and avoid the trap of thinking of Quebecois as mere concepts. The reverse also happened: people from other parts of Canada inviting people from Quebec to visit them, for the same reasons.
I listened, astonished, to accounts of how people’s preconceptions were done away with, and perceptions of other Canadians were changed. I was thirty-eight years old, born and raised in Calgary. This approach to Quebec, I had certainly never been taught in my fundamentalist upbringing in Alberta. These people from Quebec sounded…normal. Regular people, like us.
By the end of the third hour, my thought was, “Yes yes, the concert was great but I want to hear Morningside again tomorrow!”
For a few weeks, I only listened to Morningside, before switching back to other stations the rest of the day. But even that morning dose was already having an effect. I honestly had had no idea how people lived in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, or New Brunswick. Prince Edward Island was Anne of Green Gables but nothing else. Saskatchewan -- like southern Alberta, but flatter? Manitoba and Winnipeg were complete mysteries. British Columbia I supposedly knew more about because I had visited Vancouver and Summerland a couple of times.
And the north? Please. The land north of Edmonton was empty and negligible, right? Except Fort McMurray and the tar sands (I was a Calgarian, after all). I don’t remember ever sparing a thought for anything north of that. All of this was a pretty accurate summary of my knowledge of Canada. Before Morningside.
Every morning came some new revelation. I worked alone, so I could listen all morning. Sometimes I would stop in my tracks, new information just pouring into my head. And it wasn’t just Canada – I heard people from the rest of the world too, describing their lives, customs, scholarship, politics. Beneath the excitement of all this new learning was the feeling, “How could I never have heard about this before?”
And the music! The writers! Canadians I had never heard of, but whose writing and music now struck me to the heart. Alice Munro. Carol Shields. Rohinton Mistry. Stan Rogers. Moxy Fruvous. Susan Aglukark. It was on Morningside that I first heard the unbelievably beautiful, haunting song “Woodsmoke and Oranges,” written by Ian Tamblyn and sung by the a capella group, Three Sheets to the Wind. I stood frozen by this song, with tears streaming and streaming down my face. I was transported.
“...the land of the silver birch, cry of the loon, there’s something about this country that’s a part of me and you...” I could never have related to those words before. But I was beginning to understand them now.
I started making lists – books and music I wanted to find, Canadian history I wanted to learn about.
By spring, I was staying with the CBC even after Morningside. First, the Alberta program, “Wild Rose Country,” then Vicky Gabereau, totally outrageous and fascinating, from the perspective of Vancouver. The first time I learned anything about Robertson Davies was on her program. But even she was more of a prelude to the next big stage of my Becoming Canadian, in the summer of ‘95.
Bill Richardson was Vicky Gabereau’s summer replacement, with his program where the purpose of the show was to get Canadian listeners phoning and writing in, to share stories on particular topics. Once again I heard about Canadians’ lives from parts of the country I knew nothing about, guided by Bill’s warm chocolate voice and great humour.
From then on, I was verging on becoming a daytime CBC Radio junkie. When the Quebec Referendum happened late in 1995, I knew the issues and viewpoints, because I had heard about them on the CBC. When a news columnist (from the Calgary Sun, of all places!) wrote that Peter Gzowski probably did more to hold Canada together than any politician, I heartily agreed. I had been listening to the CBC for less than a year.
Saturday morning grocery shopping happened while listening to Max Ferguson, and The Great Eastern (which I still think was the most brilliant and darkly funny show I’ve ever heard on the CBC). When Stewart Maclean came to Calgary promoting his first Vinyl Café book, I was astounded by how packed the place was. I wasn’t alone! Even in Calgary. This was great!
In subsequent years, I fretted for people being flooded in Manitoba or hit with the ice storm in eastern Canada. I learned about the suffering fisheries. Cheered the formation of Nunavut. I heard about county fairs and pumpkin growing contests. Heard reports from folk festivals. Found out who Doris Anderson was, and learned about the “Persons Case.” Discovered the music of Vaughn Williams while listening to Peter Togni on Radio Two – standing frozen literally and metaphorically under the dark, star-filled, winter-morning Calgary sky as I heard “Lark Ascending” for the very first time. (And yes – I do know Vaughn Williams was not Canadian.)
There was one moment when everything crystallized and I realized what had happened to me. On the news one afternoon, I heard that the Helms-Burton law had been passed in the United States, in which the Americans told every other country in the world that they weren’t allowed to trade with Cuba. Lloyd Axworthy, our Foreign Affairs Minister at the time, responded that we were a sovereign nation, thank you very much, and we were the ones who decided who we would trade with, and we would darn well trade with Cuba if we wanted.
I leaped to my feet and yelled, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” For the first time in my life I not only felt like a Canadian, I was soul-burstingly proud to be Canadian. I loved Lloyd Axworthy, I loved Canada, and I finally understood how vast and marvelous and precious this country is, how diverse, how admirable and unique. I was no longer a Canadian by accident of birth – I was a Canadian by love and by choice.
And now I will always be. Bill Richardson once challenged his listeners to describe how they would rearrange the pieces if Canada were a big puzzle. My own suggestion, as a native Albertan, was to take southern Alberta and plop it into the middle of Quebec, and take parts of Quebec and set them in Alberta for a while. And borrow Ottawa for a bit, to let it spend a year or two right on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan. There’s just nothing like exposure to other parts of Canada to shake you out of your narrow preconceptions and self-absorption.
And if there's one thing the CBC does better than ANY other medium I've ever encountered, it's plopping listeners from one part of the country smack into the middle of other parts of the country, so they can get to know one another.
Now I’ve moved to Toronto, the farthest east I’ve been in Canada. I’m planning an eventual trip to Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa, and I’m dying to visit the provinces beyond Quebec. Then, of course, my last personal Canadian frontier: the north. I’m a hot climate type of person, but through the CBC I’ve learned a few things about the north, and I think I need to visit at least once.
And up until August 15th, I was sure I'd find my friend there too: the CBC, that’s gone on ahead of me and has taught me some of the reasons I ought to go. I want to be accompanied by another song I heard for the first time on the CBC, a song that’s frequently voted one of the best Canadian songs, ever: Stan Rogers' "Northwest Passage."
How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again….The CBC made me Canadian. It has done what it was created to do. And it’s one of the best things that have ever happened to me.
If they destroy the CBC and take it away from me now, they will destroy everything they wanted to accomplish when the CBC was founded. And I will never forgive them.
