Losing Our Voice

Radio-Canada Under Siege

Alain Saulnier, Pauline Couture

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781459733176
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Media & Communications Industry
• Index: Business

The inside story of decades of government interference in the work of our national public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada. Is there a quiet campaign to hamstring and silence the CBC? In Losing Our Voice Alain Saulnier, long-time head of news and public affairs at Radio-Canada, documents the decades of political interference that have jeopardized the very existence of one of Canada's most important cultural institutions. For French-speaking Canadians, with limited options in their own language, the national broadcaster is all the more important. But tensions surrounding national unity and identity have exacerbated the tendency of federal politicians to meddle in CBC/Radio-Canada's content and management. Saulnier takes us behind the scenes as these tensions play out, and culminate in the punitive Harper budget cuts.

Chapter 1

Beginnings

The first real public radio service worthy of the name in the Montreal area was not Radio-Canada, but rather CKAC, which also owned the daily newspaper La Presse at the time. In 1922, CKAC became the first mass radio station for francophones. It was among the first radio stations in the country to offer classical music concerts, operas, and operettas. The station even had its own symphony orchestra, which tells you everything you need to know! Between 1929 and 1939, CKAC broadcast L’Heure provinciale (The Provincial Hour), a very audacious cultural and socioeconomic magazine for its time, helmed by Édouard Montpetit, the secretary-general of l’Université de Montréal. The program, funded by the Government of Quebec, offered CKAC’s audience hundreds of lectures on the economy and was immensely successful.

Later on, CKAC developed a literature program with author Robert Choquette and aired classical theatrical plays. Such programming was a reflection of the station’s first general manager, Jacques-Narcisse Cartier.[1] But this exemplary programming on CKAC was also the result of close collaboration between Cartier and the head of programming at the time, Joseph-Arthur Dupont.[2] It was Dupont who had enriched the programming by negotiating an agreement with the CBS network that provided access to symphony concerts from many other cities with orchestras of their own. In 1932, four years before the creation of CBC/Radio-Canada, Minister of Marine Alfred Duranleau, who was responsible for communications, asked Dupont to leave CKAC to join the Canadian Broadcasting Commission, the organizational ancestor of CBC/Radio-Canada. Its mandate included the functions of the future Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The commission broadcast radio programs and gave birth to CBC/Radio-Canada in 1936. From the beginning of the public service, Dupont was the director of French-language programs on Radio-Canada,[3] which therefore became a kind of descendent of CKAC.

Professor Pierre Pagé, of l’Université du Québec à Montréal, has summarized the role of CKAC by saying that it was “private radio in the spirit of public service.… From the beginning, radio appeared to be a medium centred on the quality of sound, closely tied to the art of music. Montreal’s best artists came to interpret classical music live, every two days.”[4] My mother told me that her family, the Poiriers, had rapidly adopted CKAC. It is not surprising, given that singing and classical music were almost sacred in her family. Nothing brought her more joy than attending the free classical music concerts in Lafontaine and Molson parks in Montreal. It was the loveliest possible family outing. So now, to be able to listen to concerts and arias from operas on radio — what an opportunity!

A few years later, when Radio-Canada’s radio service launched, my mother became a faithful and avid listener — once again because of her love of music — when the network began to broadcast the Metropolitan Opera from New York.

CBC/Radio-Canada’s radio services were created in 1936 precisely to counter the powerful cultural domination of the United States. It was a way for Canada to distinguish itself from its powerful neighbour to the south. At the same time, the public broadcaster offered the Canadian government a platform to address all Canadian citizens, from coast to coast, anytime.

In so doing, Canada was affirming its own identity and territory.

One of those who played a formative role in the creation of public radio was Graham Spry, cofounder of the Canadian Radio League. His writing and his actions promoted public awareness of this avant-garde idea. Thanks to the league’s pressure on both Conservative and Liberal elected officials, William Lyon Mackenzie King’s government was persuaded to create a public broadcasting system that would contribute to building the Canada of the future. In this sense, Graham Spry was one of the visionaries of the twentieth century. On the francophone side, the seminal role was played by Joseph-Arthur Dupont, father of the first French-language radio programming.

These early beginnings were not uneventful. Some private radio companies were not at all happy to see the arrival of CBC/Radio-Canada in their markets. The tensions between CBC/Radio-Canada and the private broadcasters are not new. They have always been there, as long as the public broadcaster has existed. We will come back to this.

The Mandate

At the outset, it was necessary to define a mandate for the national public broadcaster. What link should there be between the Canadian government and CBC/Radio-Canada? According to broadcast historian Pierre Pagé, this philosophical debate was not front and centre; the founders were simply too busy with the practical and logistical aspects of the operation. On the important matter of the independence of the public broadcaster, the most natural solution was to turn to the existing British model: the BBC. What could be simpler than to import it wholesale? The idea was even more obvious because the first president of CBC/Radio-Canada was British and had brought with him the only model he knew. Ever since, generations of employees and managers at the public broadcaster have taken inspiration from the BBC model and used it as a reference.

Since Canada has two major language groups, francophone and anglophone, another fundamental question that arose at the outset was whether the service should be bilingual and broadcast from a single source or whether it should have two signals, with distinctive programming from each. Should there be a single management or one for francophone Canada and one for anglophone Canada? These questions remain relevant today.

The Canadian Radio Commission’s pre-1936 experience of radio broadcasting had allowed it to test certain programming models. The preferred model at the outset was a bilingual service with shared programming. Of course, all this was well before the debates on bilingualism in Canada and on the place of French in Quebec. However, both francophones and anglophones made it clear that they wanted their own programming. Pierre Pagé tells a relevant story: before 1936, the Canadian Radio Commission’s bilingual radio programming featured the Lionel Daunais Lyrical Trio. Anglophone listeners complained in large numbers about Lionel Daunais’s French-language songs. Although this now seems obvious, at the time it came as a surprise that anglophone and francophone audiences have very different tastes!

Several years before the creation of the public broadcaster, the Aird Commission had recommended the creation of a Crown corporation to operate a national broadcasting system. At the time of its adoption, the Broadcasting Act provided for the creation of a public corporation made up of two distinct entities: Radio-Canada for francophones and the CBC for anglophones. We can therefore assume that at the time of the creation of the “national” public broadcaster, there was a clear political intent to reflect the specific needs of each language group.

There were two significant developments related to the autonomy of the French-language network in relation to the CBC. The first was in January 1941, when Assistant Director-General Augustin Frigon inaugurated the Radio-Canada News Service and chose Marcel Ouimet to lead it. This was a meaningful decision, a way to affirm the editorial independence of French-language radio. Up to that point, French radio had been limited to the translation of items from newsrooms in Toronto and Winnipeg. The only other source of news at that time was the Canadian Press, which offered English-language services only.

The second important development was the launch, in October 1941, of Radio-Collège, an entity with equal status to the News Service inside Radio-Canada. During wartime, when censorship was in full force, Radio-Collège was a bastion of freedom for francophone culture, unlike the rest of the program schedule, which was largely controlled by the government.

Once again taking inspiration from Great Britain, Augustin Frigon and his colleague, professor and producer Aurèle Séguin, had modelled Radio-Collège on the BBC’s educational radio service. This entirely new programming carved out a space where Radio-Canada’s creators and artisans could work freely. It was more independent because it was not subject to the News Service’s obligations to support the war effort, nor to censorship and propaganda. Here, I salute the artisans of Radio-Collège, who contributed to the shaping of French-Canadian identity and the emerging Québécois identity. This recognition is necessary and long overdue, as we have too often given all the credit to Radio-Canada’s television service for having played this major role in the development of culture and cultural identity among francophones. Well before the dawn of television, Radio-Collège had been showing the way since 1941.

The News Service and the Second World War

CKAC had also opened the way for francophones in news and current affairs; since 1938, Albert Duquesne had read newscasts written by CKAC’s thirty-odd journalists. The private station had beaten Radio-Canada to the punch in creating a true radio news service. It is interesting to note that CKAC served not only Montreal, but the entire province of Quebec. This forced Radio-Canada to develop an expansion strategy within Quebec at the same time as it was creating a coast-to-coast service.

Competing with CKAC in Quebec also accelerated the obligation for the public broadcaster to offer programming specifically designed for francophones, and therefore to dissociate itself from a common approach with CBC’s English-language services.

One landmark event in the relationship between Radio-Canada and the government of the day happened on September 10, 1939. That day, Prime Minister Mackenzie King broadcast his radio address announcing Canada’s entry into the war against Nazi Germany separately in each of the country’s two main languages. Although those who had been arguing in favour of this approach had barely dared to hope for success, the prime minister legitimized the idea of autonomous programming in French for Radio-Canada.

After two years at war in Europe, the need to do a better job of informing the population from coast to coast about the Canadian armed forces’ activities in Europe was becoming increasingly obvious; this sparked the creation of the Radio-Canada News Service.

In addition to the declaration of war, Mackenzie King also announced the simultaneous imposition of censorship for all Canadian media. It was henceforth forbidden to speak or to write independently. All were subject to censorship on all matters related to the war. The arm’s-length principle between Radio-Canada and the federal government had therefore become an intellectual conceit by 1942, when the Canadian government organized a plebiscite on conscription. In an article headlined “La censure en temps de guerre: Radio-Canada et le plebiscite de 1942” (“Censorship in Wartime: Radio-Canada and the plebiscite of 1942”),[5] Alain Canuel says Radio-Canada management blacklisted the opponents of conscription in 1942, while those who were favourable to conscription could express themselves at will — all this in support of national unity. Radio-Canada was certainly not alone in having to deal with these new rules. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was also subject to the federal government’s determination to support the Canadian Army’s war effort. A number of films from this time are available on the NFB’s website. Today, these productions would be seen as unmistakable examples of government propaganda. They include animated films from the NFB’s legendary Norman McLaren,[6] notably a campaign film for the famous Victory Bonds, which helped to finance Canada’s war effort.

The people who lived through the Second World War remember these patriotic messages created by the NFB and presented on neighbourhood movie screens.

On radio, the great hero among war correspondents was Marcel Ouimet. Perfectly bilingual, he produced reports for both the French and English networks. It was he, in 1943, who sent the news from the front where Canadian soldiers were engaged. Two years later, Radio-Canada International (RCI) began to broadcast. From 1946, its airwaves became home to a certain René Lévesque, back from the front where he had also worked — not for Radio-Canada, but for the Voice of America radio service.

Lévesque had accompanied the U.S. Army in its battles and travels in Europe. In his memoirs, he tells the emotional story of his arrival at Dachau, shortly after American troops had liberated the last surviving Jewish prisoners in the concentration camp.

When Canada participated in the Korean War in 1950, it was again René Lévesque who reported for RCI. Some of these reports are available on the CBC archives website.[7] It was here that he developed his great talent for clear communications and popularization, which would make him a celebrity when he moved to television a few years later.

The Golden Age of Radio

Some people think of the Second World War period as the golden age of radio. This is first and foremost because all families wanted news from the front, but there is another reason: it was also the time of the emergence of the radioromans — radio soap operas beloved by my mother’s and my grandmother’s generations. At home, they listened to Rue principale (Main Street)[8] and Un homme et son péché (A Man and His Sin).[9] The collective experience of these radio soaps and their imaginary universes reinforced a sense of belonging among francophones. It defined the cultural and national identity of French Canada. Furthermore, Radio-Collège’s programming offered forays into the history of humanity and the world of ideas.

At the same time, English Canadians were building a national identity of their own, one more and more Canadian and less and less British. This search for an English-Canadian identity was nearly always set in the context of distinguishing themselves from American culture.

CBC/Radio-Canada, then, served to forge national identity for both francophones and anglophones in this country. There were two identities, each struggling with their own particular challenges. (At the time, most people were completely unaware of the existence of Acadian or Aboriginal identities.)

Following my parents’ generation, mine had to pick up the continuing thread of this search for cultural identity. The first Un homme et son péché aired on radio, but the story was then adapted for television for the following generation under the title Les Belles Histoires des pays d’en haut (Beautiful Stories from the Upper Country). It is still possible to connect with this cultural heritage when the Belles Histoires series reappears on cable from time to time.

Once again, private broadcasters were the first to offer radio soaps. It was often difficult to distinguish between the private and public versions of this kind of radio programming. In fact, it was not unusual at the time for broadcasters to raid their competitors for talent across public-private lines, especially the big names. This was the case for Roger Baulu, who was known as the “Prince of Announcers.” He first achieved stardom on CKAC. Well before he hosted La Poule aux œufs d’or (The Hen with the Golden Eggs)[10] on Radio-Canada television, Baulu had anchored radio game shows such as La Course aux trésors (The Treasure Hunt). His departure for Radio-Canada at the beginning of the war had provoked an uproar and heightened the rivalry between CKAC and Radio-Canada. Baulu spent a large part of his professional life at Radio-Canada. He enjoyed a brilliant career there as a host, first on radio and then on television, where he co-hosted (with Jacques Normand) the famous late-night talk show Les Couche-tard[11] from 1960 to 1970.

Right after the hockey game on Saturday night, as a child, I was allowed to stretch out the evening by a few minutes. Lying on the floor in front of the family television set with my older brothers, I allowed myself to be rocked to sleep by the show’s theme song, written by Jean-Pierre Ferland:

Regardez-les, les couche-tard, ils ont l’œil lourd et gris

Ils traînent le jour, les couche-tard, et poussent la nuit

Ils vivent au soleil de minuit et on les arrose au whisky, ces fleurs de macadam …

[Look at the late-to-bed crowd, eyes heavy and grey,

They drag themselves around all day and grow at night,

They live under the midnight sun and are watered with whisky, these flowers of the tarmac …]

These words still resonate today among my childhood memories. I loved going to bed late and playing with the older kids in the family.