A rchive Date
[ 27-01-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/byfield.html
Gzowski's world was rejected
By TED BYFIELD -- Edmonton Sun
January 27, 2002 Peter Gzowski, a key player in the Toronto media and academic set that re-made Canada after the Sixties revolution, died last week, a seemingly heart-broken man. Not because smoking had cut him off at the age of 67. He expected that, even wrote a book about it. Rather, it was because the new Canada he helped create wasn't working and he knew it.
Not that he actually ever said or wrote this. How could he? He was a true believer. He was confident the country he portrayed in Maclean's magazine and for 15 years hosting the CBC's Morningside show, was the Canada that was here to stay.
It was the pre-eminently "nice" Canada. It didn't fight wars like the Americans; it had medicare instead. It was generous to criminals and just knew that, given enough loving care, we'd see they were really nice guys. It extended its welfare programs to the world, or to that element able to reach its borders where everybody got in.
It was a generous Canada, not inhibited by the old strictures against spending, living within your means, pay as you go, etc. It operated on a firm dogma. "If the private sector can't do this, we'll have to turn it over to the government" went this dogma, not suspecting that the government couldn't do it either or might do it worse. Government, we all knew, could do anything.
It was an apologetic Canada - the English-speaking three-quarters of it anyway. We apologized to the French Canadians, to the natives, to minority groups, to women. No one noticed, of course, on whose behalf we were apologizing. It was never for what "we do" but always for what "they did" - meaning the generations that came before, the parents of the nation-builders. We were watching, in fact, teen-age rebellion protracted into a lifelong pursuit.
The new Canada had a history and an historian to tell it. That was the role of Pierre Berton. Yet there was something odd about Berton's histories, notably that all his heroes were very unlike the caring, sharing, sensitive, concerned, infinitely tolerant specimens who were supposed to represent the new Canada. They were mostly pirates, exploiters and cut-throats who built railways, fought wars and despoiled environments.
The cornerstone of the new Canada was the CBC. It didn't belong to Canada. It was Canada. Indeed, Canada belonged to it. To be a Canadian you read Pierre Berton, studied and meditated upon David Suzuki, and above all listened to Peter Gzowski. That way, you thought the right thoughts and said the right things (meaning usually the left things).
But Gzowski's role was by far the most demanding. He had to be the new Canadian. He must not only talk about "nice," he had to embody nice, above all with his radio voice.
He actually did this. It was an incredible accomplishment. He became the living, breathing, sighing incarnation of the new Canada. The sighing was important, for its foremost virtue is empathy, and no one could empathize as earnestly and with such heart-felt sincerity as Peter Gzowski. He exuded concern.
By 1990, he and his fellow nation-builders could look around Canada, meaning around Toronto, and everywhere feel assured that the work was done - the old Canada had been abolished, the old order dissolved, the old rules repealed.
Then things began to go wrong. It started - like so many other counter-progressive things - in Alberta. The Klein government got elected and began dismantling the local welfare state. The routine media attack fell flat because an awful thing occurred. The public supported Klein. The Harris disaster in Ontario followed, then Ottawa began to cut back. Finally the sacred precinct itself was invaded. The CBC was hit, again and again. Appeal after appeal failed, until, the ultimate reality sank in. Nobody gave a damn.
From then on every development was a reversal, and the dying Peter had to watch them all. In his last conscious week he no doubt saw the Canadian dollar hit the lowest point in its history.
Almost overnight, it seemed, the new Canada had become itself another old Canada, and a new generation was looking for a new direction.
It hasn't found it, but one thing was certain. It had rejected Gzowski's world. It was looking elsewhere.
Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@edm.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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