Canada

August 26, 2003

Poor Irish Children Mentioning the Beachcombers reminded me a of a related, hilarious phenomenon that I learned about in Ireland. In the seventies and eighties, Ireland's national broadcaster, RTE, apparently purchased the rights to a ton of television shows from the CBC and National Film Board of Canada. So, Irish kids were raised all sorts of Canadian touchstones, including stories of Inuit, The Kids of Degrassi Street (and Junior High and High), Danger Bay, the aforementioned Beachcombers and many others. This was handy, as it enabled me to make obscure references to Canadian shows among my Irish friends. They, on the other hand, were kind of bitter about the whole thing, and believed that Canada was composed of grizzled log hunters, moose and canoes. Which, in truth, is more or less correct. I wonder, will the new generation of Irish kids get to see Degrassi: The Next Generation (regrettably, there are no phasers)? Incidentally, I had a big crush on Caitlin (pictured above). She was the good girl on Degrassi, and, if I recall correctly, went on to university and much happiness. 10:04:35 AM      Trackback []    Canada The Arts

The BBC and the CBC As you no doubt know by now, the BBC plans to put its entire radio and television archive online, free of charge. This amounts to an enormous gift to the world, and to history. It's truly a visionary decision for which the British government should be lauded. Danny O'Brien has some interesting observations about the decision. That got me thinking about the CBC. What's the state of their archives? Could they undertake a similar project? Imagine if all national broadcasters made such a donation to the public domain. I emailed the CBC archives to see what their thoughts on such a project. Obviously it would be tremendously expensive and time-consuming, but I think it's absolutely a project worth doing. And not just because there are several episodes of Beachcombers that I missed. 9:58:06 AM      Trackback []    Canada The Arts The Commons The Long View