Foreigners in Etobicoke

From MORDECAI RICHLER

MONTREAL

WE were, as I recall it, embarrassed to be Canadians. Charged with it, we always had a self-deprecating joke ready.

At college, during the late Forties, when we began to read the New Republic and the New Statesman and Nation, and one or perhaps two of us dared to say out loud in a tavern, 'I'm going to be a writer,' the immediate rejoinder was, 'What? You're going to be a Canadian writer. Hey, he's going to be a Canadian writer.

We actually had a course on Canadian writing at our college. The mimeographed text listed the author, dimensions, number of pages and photo- graphs, if any, 'of nearly every book that had ever been published here. There were, at the time, several Canadian 'little magazines' but we would have considered it a stigma to have our stories printed in any one of them, just as the most damaging criticism you could make of another man's poetry was, 'Ryerson is publish- ing it in Toronto.'

London and New York were the places we looked to for all our excitements. We had never had, in the literary history of our own country, a magazine that young people might have re- sponded to, like Penguin New Writing, and what really bound us together in those days was a shared sense of how comic our country was. We appeared to be surrounded by the ridiculous. A political party called Progressive-Conservative, the cult of Barbara Ann Scott, hunt balls in Montreal, Beverley Baxter's shmaltzy London letters in Maclean's. (obsequious chit-chat about the nobility, a little word dropped in his ear by his pal Winnie), the Native Sons of Canada, the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the British Empire, Brotherhood Week, and so forth. No country is without its baboons, inanities and out- landish conventions, but what made ours different was that only the most private and isolated voices were raised in protest. Here a professor, there a poet, and between, thousands of miles of wheat and indifference. So when we discovered, in the early Forties, the CBC Stage series, those plays of Lister Sinclair and Len Peterson that were produced by Andrew Allen with John Drainie usually playing the lead, we used to gather grate- fully round the radio to listen on Sunday nights. We were in Montreal: but I suspect it was the same all across the country. Andrew Allen was a name we respected. His writers shared our hopes; their concept of humbug was mine. We would have been honoured to work for Allen, and many, scattered long since, got their start doing precisely that.

On reflection the adaptations from, say, Kafka, Chekhov, and Ibsen were a pleasure to listen to, the standard of production was high, but the original plays were not as good as we thought they were. The playwrights of that golden age of Canadian radio were liberal intellectuals, sociologists who wrote, rather than the makers of flesh-and-blood art. The framework of many of their radio plays, stripped of thdir progressive ideas, was often corny. I recall one play about a blind girl who falls in love with a man who avoids and then even hides from her when he discovers she is to regain her sight. He was, you see, a Negro. At best, the very best, this sort of writing might 'have produced an Arthur Miller, but it didn't. All the same, in a land where there were no more than thirty bookshops from coast to coast, these productions were significant.

The Stage leries still goes on, but I doubt that many within range of a TV transmitter bother to listen in these days. In its last political flowering the series was responsible for The Investigator, by Reuben Ship, and, as was fitting, the producer was Andrew Allen, and the star, John Drainie.

Such was the quality and influence of CBC radio that when the TV building began to go up, in 1951, expectations were very high. But the only playwright CBC TV can claim is Arthur Hailey. (Others were, to begin with, novelists or radio writers.) What CBC TV did spawn, and lose quicker than you can say ITV, were a clutch of talented directors. TV also created, here as elsewhere, personalities on a national scale, the difference being that in Canada, where there are no international newspapers, the personalities had more impact. There was Elaine Grand, since departed for England, but still, fortunately, often seen on Close-Up here. And we also have Pierre Berton and Nathan Cohen.

Berton is our indefatigable amalgam of Cas- sandra, the late Gilbert Harding, and Kenneth Allsop; he writes a daily column (the most in- fluential and widely read in the country) for the Toronto Star, reads IA nutorials (one-minute opinion capsules) every hour for radio station CHUM, appears regularly on CBC TV's most popular panel show, Front Page Challenge, and, i suppose, gets on with his next book. Cohen is something else. He, too, writes for the Star (drama reviews, show biz gossip), and has his own TV show, as compere of Fighting Words, our highbrow panel show. He is intelligent, know- Vhicr—we interested in Secrets of the Animal Kingdom?' ledgeable, and clearly the best drama critic we might have had. But Cohen has opted to be a personality—Read The Man Toronto Loves To Hate—rather than sue for the higher, less glitter- ing office of the truly serious critic. Like the supermarket, Cohen now has a function in suburbia. He is their concept of the intellectual, erudite, sloppily dressed, and seemingly out- spoken. But even as the meat in the supermarket is frozen, the fruit hothouse-ripened, and the vegetables artificially coloured, so Cohen offers the illusion of seriousness.

The TV situation in Canada is complicated : what holds true for one region is false for an- other. American channels, for instance, cannot be received in all of Canada, but they are avail- able throughout the most thickly populated areas, and of those who do have a choice between American and Canadian channels, 68 per cent.

prefer the American. The CBC, naturally, car- ries many American programmes. Finally, of all the viewing done in this country, of US and Canadian channels, 79 per cent. is of imported shows. Last year eight Canadian shows figured in the top fifteen; this year there were only five.

Second in the ratings are the NHL hockey tele- casts, a decidedly Canadian venture; and of the other Canadian shows to make the top fifteen, two are country corncob: Don Messer's Jubilee and Country Hoedown.

There are three types of Canadian-run TV available in Canada. CBC TV, privately-owned channels, and, in limited areas, toll TV. If you'll bear with me, I'll try to deal with them—as well as US channels aimed at Canada—one by one.

1. CBC TV.

Government-owned, collects an annual grant from taxes of seventy million dollars, and is sup- posed to be dedicated to national unity and uplift as well as fun. The CBC differs from the BBC in that it can and does carry advertising. It puts on Festival '61, supposed to be the big cultural show-

'That's what I've got against English cooking; you get so bored with Spaghetti Bolognese.'

piece. But, at the CBC these talent-depleted days, they come to culture with lead boots and deter- mined philistine hearts. Like Willy Loman, they trust the brand names only. Shakespeare equals culture; Shakespeare in modern dress, very cul- tured. There has been no attempt to recruit, say, Brian Moore to write an original play. The sponsored drama shows are generally unam- bitious and poor in quality, imitative of American formula drama shows, but so obviously inferior that there's no question why most viewers prefer to watch the real stuff piped in from Buffalo. The pity is that the CBC, so often attacked for being highbrow, is not nearly highbrow enough. On the one hand—in the sponsored dramas—they engage in hopeless competition with a slicker, more expensive American product; on the other (Festival. etc.), their usual interpretation of cul- ture is a bore. Where the CBC has been more successful is in its coverage and delivery of the news (faultlessly responsible), and in public affairs.

2. Privately-owned channels.

There arc now fifty-four across Canada. Of these, forty-six are affiliated with the CBC, and eight are brand new and entirely private. CFTO, the largest of the brand-new channels, opened with an eighteen-hour telethon to raise money for retarded children and, even by Toronto stan- dards, this stunt scaled new and hitherto unsus- pected heights of bad taste. Every two-bit night- club performer within a fifty-mile radius was rounded up and introduced as if he were Sir Laurence Olivier or Marilyn Monroe. The Mayor Of All The People, Nathan Phillips, and Joel Aldred, a director of CFTO, sat down to chat about the children so movingly that, at any moment, I thought one or the other was going to say (teleprompter be damned), I was a retarded child.

Joel Aldred, by the way, is the most sincere fella in Canada. He will not, he has said, do a commercial for a product unless he believes in it. Fortunately, in the past, there have been enough of these products around for him. Mr. Aldred has made many pious statements about the Canadian shows he has planned. At the moment, though, the majority of his advertised shows are canned American products, and he is shrewdly playing Some first-rate old and not-so- old movies against the CBC's big shows.

CFTO must, by next year, raise its quota of Canadian shows to 55 per cent. An easily skirted ruling, this. You show National Film Board shorts in off-peak hours and throw in a few party and panel games.

3. American channels.

There are as many as four available in Toronto, and in Montreal (with the aid of a special aerial that just about everybody has). A 1,450 ft. tower that recently went up in North Dakota was aimed directly at Winnipeg, and New York ad agencies classify Buffalo channels (over the Ontario border) as 'Canadian.' These chan- nels, as I pointed out earlier, are the most popular in the country wherever they are available.

4. Toll TV.

On February 26, 1960, Famous Player of Canada (a division of Paramount ,Pictures) set up a toll TV station in a suburb of Toronto that has since become famous. The proprietors of Trans- Canada Telemeter in Etobicoke are very reluc- tant to release any viewing or financial figures, but, as the station is still in an experimental stage, this is forgivable.

Etobicoke was chosen as a trial area, accord- ing to Famous Players, because it is in a highly competitive area (CRC, private, and US chan- nels) and offers a choice opportunity for the motivation research experts to study the viewing habits of all income groups. To begin with, 5,800 telemeter sets were installed at a cost of $5 to the subscriber, though the sets cost $100 to pro- duce. (A better, cheaper set is now being de- veloped, and this, more than anything else. seems to be holding up some very ambitious plans for expansion.) The set, as presently constructed, offers subscribers a choice of three channels, and registers all his viewing on an electronic tape. It is checked every sixty days and, naturally, the tape is studied most carefully.

'Theatre-in-the-home' (lick the baby-sitter and parking problems) is Telemeter's biggest selling point. And, to date, their usual offering is a selec- tion of first-run movies, uncut and without com- mercials, for a fee of 75 cents. But Telemeter recently attempted its first original show, An Evening with Bob Newhall, and this was so successful that other, more ambitious projects are planned for future transmission. Among the off-Broadway shows recently put on video-tape by Telemeter (Paramount) are Hedda Gabler, The Country Scandal, and Menotti's The Consul. Impressed, I asked William Crampton, the general manager of Telemeter, if he intended to appeal to minority tastes.

'Well,' he said, 'we showed an Italian movie recently with titles and it dropped dead. But if we were in Toronto, well there's a very big Italian colony there now and . .

I explained that wasn't quite what I meant by minority tastes.

'We intend to have something for everybody,' he said. He also told me that a recent showing of Wild Strawberries had been a failure. 'People phoned up to complain,' he said. 'We have enough foreigners in Etobicoke, they said, without you showing foreign films.'

Early observations show that homes in the highest income bracket are toll TV's worst bet. In winter, the well-to-do are in Florida, arid, in summer, out at the cottage. The ideal home is the one where the breadwinner only has a two-week vacation.

So far, indications are that the project, con- ducted on such a small scale, has been costly, but the potential is enormous. Mr. Crampton says that the producer of such a block-buster as Ben-Hur would be satisfied if he could reach 10 per cent, of the potential cinema audience, but Etobicoke samples indicate that they can hit at least 20 per cent. of the potential audience with a picture like The Ten Commandments, and that makes for some very heady arithmetic. All CinemaScope productions are being photo- graphed so that, in the future, they can be squeezed on to the TV screens without distortion. (Telemeter's opening CinemaScope production, Journey into the Centre of the Earth, was a little embarrassing. For ten minutes James Mason's nose, on one side of your Theatre-in- the-Home screen, discussed urgent matters with Pat Boone's, on the other.)