Thrifted Treasures~

Here are some recent things I picked up. This Shabby Chic quilt and two matching pillow shams were only $8 bucks.Here is an assortment of neat-o things... a silver heart dish $3, the gold wooden box was $2, the hammered silver tray was only $2, the little saucer was .50cents and the two flower bouquets were $3 bucks for both.

This potting table with the tin top was only $10. I'm going to stain the whole thing, won't it look fabulous? I've always wanted one! I could use it as an outdoor (soda) bar or set it beside the b.b.q or just set super caute things on it!..... neat-neat-neat!Drum roll please....... lookie what I got for FIVE DOLLARS~ Ohhhhhhhhhh M Geeeeeeeeeeee!

I am sooooooooo painting this white! Won't it be fabulous filled with quilts or books... the ideas are endless! This shopping cart is so neat, it even folds flat. I lurve it!!

Lazy Sunday # 104: Who Dat?

Perhaps nothing better exemplifies how out of touch Corporate America and network television executives can get than the selection of entertainment for next week’s Super Bowl XLIV in Miami.

Of course, nobody could’ve predicted that a team vying for the NFL championship would hail from one of the USA’s music capitols, New Orleans.

And, yeah, I know every city has its own musical style. There are the other real famous ones like Detroit and Nashville. But Chicago and Memphis are right up there too. And New York, LA and Austin don’t have anything to apologize for. Heck, I’m sure there are supporters of the other competing team who could rhyme off a list of famous bands and great music that sprang from Indianapolis.

But instead of appealing to an audience already stoked with local fervor, even if they don’t live in New Orleans --- the people who program the Super Bowl Half Time Show this year chose to feature “The Who”, a band who’s first “Final Farewell” concert I witnessed in Toronto in 1982 (more than a quarter century ago).

Have “The Who” reunited, recorded, toured and retired since then. Yes, many times.

Have they had a big hit since 1982? Um. Not really.

Have they been a major influence on music since 1982? What? Are you kidding?

Okay. Are their old hits the theme songs of the three most popular shows broadcast by this year’s Super Bowl network, CBS?  Er…

C’mon, that’s not why they’re playing --- is it?

Of course it is.

If you’re in Las Vegas for the game, take the Sports Book Props option that “Who Are You?”, “Baba O’Reilly” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” will be part of the halftime set.

And oddly enough, the people giving CBS millions of dollars to have their ads sandwiched on either side of The Who’s performance are just happy to be at the Super Bowl with their private jets and celebrity boxes and apparently don’t mind that their brand is being associated with…

That’s the warning that a Florida child advocacy group sent to 1500 homes near the stadium where next Sunday’s game will be played.  A local wag in Miami suggested that kids not only be warned to beware of an aging rock star offering them candy and the chance to see some puppies, but not to be tempted by a suggestion they pick up a case of Bud Light or a new set of Bridgestone Tires either.

Okay, technically, Pete Townshend has never been convicted of physically harming a child. And he was only on that Kiddie Porn site to do research and only used his credit card to get, I don’t know, “better” research. And he didn’t call the police to tell them what he’d found because he thought it would get him in trouble.

Uh-huh.

Perhaps appreciative of his good intentions, police in Britain ultimately didn’t charge Pete, but he did have to provide his fingerprints and a DNA sample and was placed on the sex offender registry for five years.

Some say Pete got off said registry when his sentence expired last year. But others say he’s still there because of a short story about underage sex he published on his website in 2006 that was removed after it outraged European child advocate groups.

There was also the little matter of an “anti-Pedophile” comment he posted on his blog which compared kiddie porn to “a free line of cocaine at a decadent cocktail party: only the strong willed or terminally uncurious can resist."

“Only the strong willed and terminally uncurious can resist”? Oh, Pete… I know that “The Heart wants what it wants” as Woody Allen once said in somewhat similar circumstances. But couldn’t you have just left the spotlight in 1982 and maybe gone off to hang with Gary Glitter?

Because if you had, you might have made room on the Super Bowl stage for a bunch of talented musicians who have flooded New Orleans with songs to celebrate their beloved hometown football team.

The war cry of Saints fans is “Who dat?” which was born in 1983, when Saints players teamed up with Aaron Neville to record a version of “When The Saints Go Marchin’ In” that included the soon to be famous “Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?” The original song and a decade later update can be found here.

And in that New Orleans Jazz tradition of taking something old and breathing fresh life into it, local artists Prof. X-Man, BigShott Da Black Rhino, Big Rec, & Kuniqua have released another take on “Who Dat?”

But you won’t see or hear them at the Super Bowl.

And unless they each come up with the $2400 estimated to be the average price of a Super Bowl ticket this year they, like you, will be watching the game on TV and subjected to the dinosaur thinking of CBS and the two still-barely-sucking-oxygen members of a band that should’ve lived up to their first hit anthem and died before they got old.

Here’s “Heart of the City”. Savor the passion and the energy. Hope it soon has a place on television. And Enjoy your Sunday.

Playing house~

It is still dark and gloomy outside, at least the rain has let up for now :-) I thought I would take some time and work inside my house and make it lighter and brighter. Here is a small space beside my front door which also leads into my long narrow kitchen. I've had this small shelf unit here for ages-- just waiting for a larger narrow piece to take its place. Well... I found one-- twice. I bought this fabulous piece at a thrift store for only $20 bucks. Love it!When I brought it home I tucked it into my bedroom and filled it with linens and quilts. Well, while "shopping" around my house for things to use in different spots... I measured this cabinet and wouldn't you know it? It would fit into this small space. SCORE! See? I found it twice!I used some cardstock poster board which I cut to fit behind the cut out scrolled work on the front of the doors. I then used spray adhesive to adhere the vintage nubby pink fabric to it so it would be a little more sturdy. I backed the fabric inserts with sheets of music. Then I just used hot glue and glued it into place. Now, I get the fun task of loading it up with goodies. I think I'll even add some lace to the shelf. Caute!

2010 O.W.O.H. Giveaway~

This is my third year participating in the "One World One Heart" yearly event hosted by Lisa at, A Whimsical Bohemian.I really enjoy going to each blog and checking them out and of course entering to win something is like chocolate topping on ice cream, just makes it better! This year I am having two giveaways. The first one is open to anyone who would like to enter the drawing. The second giveaway is solely for new and old followers of my blog. Just a little sum-thin' sum-thin' to say thank you for making me feel like I'm not typing to myself. If you are listed as a follower you will be automatically entered in both drawings. The first giveaway is a box of full of random things.... here is the neat old box itself~ Here is a photo of whats inside of the box~Here is a list of whats inside the old box.... a bunch of old postcards, a crochet hankie, two old sequined ornaments, super old fruit jar labels, vintage cards, an old childrens school book, The Language of Flowers book, old ephemera and lastly, tons of antique rubber stamps! This second giveaway is for new and old followers of my blog~ An old-old antique tintype photograph. Neat huh? Here is a close up of the rosy cheeked lady in the photograph...Here is a photo of the outside of the tintype~The spine of this photo book is no longer connected. It is in two pieces, the velvet side and the photo side. I didn't want to fix it thinking I might devalue it.

Both drawings for my two giveaways will take place on February the 15th~ If you have linked to my blog and wish to view more... you can click here to poke around~

First big project of the Year

Okie dokie artichokies.... here is my first big project of the new year. I've had this fabulous shelf unit for about 15 odd years or so. I picked it up at a yard sale for $100. My hubby and I pulled up just as a bunch of men were going to unload it from the back of a truck. I said, "Wait a minute, how much is it?" Someone said, "one hundred bucks"--- I said, "leave it on the truck, I live right down the street....I'm buying it-- and your delivering it!" This piece of furniture was used in a cute country store as a display to hold candles, picture frames and other cute stuff for sale.
The entire thing is made up of shelves, which makes it hard to use as a piece to store things-- which I need more of. I decided to use large matching baskets on the two large bottom shelves to hold my extra stuff . I bought 8 baskets which I painted white and made lids for using plywood cut to sit on top of each basket. The baskets hold a lot and keep the clutter well hidden!

It is super cute... but I was wanting to change it up a bit. I'm going for a softer decorating style~ I decided to paint the whole thing white and cover up the heart cut outs. It only cost $10 bucks for the thin board that I used to cover up the cut outs. I made a paper pattern and cut out each piece I needed with my jigsaw (on the kitchen table, its raining outside!) I then just nailed the wood on both the outside and the inside of the shelf unit. After that, I primed & painted with a flat white paint until I thought my arm would fall off. I like how it turned out. Here is the after~ You wouldn't think it would be hard to fill with stuff to make it look cute, but it was very hard! I'm going to look through my huge collection of decorating books to get ideas on what to put on those shelves.Here is a photo of it straight on~I also recovered the lids of the 8 baskets I have on this unit. I used some curtains from the "Shabby Chic" line as the fabric on the lids. I hot glued the fabric onto the plywood and then covered the fabric with clear contact paper to keep them from getting dusty. Now, I can take a soft cloth to the tops of the lids to keep them clean.

There is a linky party to see more before and afters at the blog: Thrifty Chick Decor..... go check them out! You can also see more Show & Tells over at Cindy's blog "My Romantic Home" Jen is hosting a linky party on her blog Sanctuary Arts. Please visit and see what everyone has been working on as their first big project of the year~ If you have linked to my blog and wish to view more, just click right here!

Lazy Sunday # 103: Slaughter Nick for President!

If anybody ever tries to tell you that Canadian TV isn’t all that special, ask if they’ve ever heard of Nick Slaughter.

Nick was a fictional gumshoe from the classic Dashiell Hammett mold. Unshaven and hard-drinking, he was saddled with a “down these mean streets walks a man who is not himself mean” morality and a dark sense of humor.

Nick was played by one of Canada’s finest actors, Rob Stewart, the lead character in a 1990’s TV series titled “Tropical Heat” in some markets and “Sweating Bullets” in others.

The series ran three seasons from 1991 – 1994, shooting first in Mexico then Israel and finally South Africa, taking advantage of whichever co-production deal offered its producers the best bang for their buck.

But the creative team was entirely Canadian and for all of the exotic locations and sun-drenched beauties, the writing, directing and acting all displayed a decidedly Canadian take on the “blue-skies” private eye genre.

I had the good fortune of writing five episodes of those three seasons and was later able to hire Rob to star in “Broken Lullaby” a CBS TV movie we shot in Hungary in 1994. 

The Bosnian Conflict was at its height at the time and on Saturday mornings we could visit flea markets selling Russian AK-47’s and land mines that had been turned back at the border. And sometimes at night you could see the flashes of distant artillery and rocket fire on the horizon.

Little did Rob know that while Canadian jets were raining devastation on Serbia, he was giving the innocent in that war hope for a better future. 

For it seems that the UN trade embargo imposed on the country had gone into effect just after tapes of “Tropical Heat” made it over the border, becoming the only escapist entertainment available during the civil war that tore the former Yugoslavia apart.

“Tropical Heat” became so popular it ended up running on all four Serbian TV networks for several years, eventually becoming a symbol of opposition politics, particularly among the country’s urban youth.

The show’s idyllic tropical setting and content imbued with a Canadian sense of justice, fair play and self-deprecating humor had turned it into a national cultural phenomenon.

Soon after the war, with the country roiling against election fraud perpetrated by President Slobodan Milosevic in 1996, a movement was ignited to establish Nick Slaughter as a symbolic revolutionary hero. During the student protests that followed, Graffiti began appearing in Belgrade that read "Slotera Nika, za predsednika" ("Nick Slaughter for President") and meaning “Anybody but Milosevic”.

Meanwhile, a local punk band  by the name of “Atheist Rap” had a hit record with "Slaughteru Nietzsche" with its chorus of "Nick Slaughter, Serbia hails you".

Local bars renamed themselves "Tropical Heat" and mothers were encouraged to name their sons “Nick Slaughter”.

The result of all this – the only peaceful overthrow of a dictatorship in the 20th Century. Carrying banners emblazoned with the logo of a mostly forgotten Canadian TV series, the people of Serbia drove Milosevic from power without firing a single shot.

Oddly enough, or maybe not odd at all when you consider how little publicity Canadian television gets, nobody associated with “Tropical Heat” knew anything about all this. And they wouldn’t for ten more years.

That all changed in 2008 when somebody talked Rob Stewart into going on “Facebook”. He posted his profile and woke up the next morning to discover he had 17,000 friend requests from Serbia.

After learning the reason for his immense popularity in a country he’d never set foot in, Stewart, filmmaker Marc Vespi and Vespi’s sister Liza, decided to travel to Belgrade and make a documentary on what transpired.

What followed was one of the most astonishing experiences of Rob’s life. Grown men dissolved in tears on meeting him, politicians thanked him for saving their country and thousands turned up to see him join “Atheist Rap” onstage to sing their hit song about a character he’d first brought to life.

All of that will be available for other Canadians to see in a soon to be released documentary entitled “Slaughter Nick for President”…

Or…

It would be…

If the people I’ve been railing about all week who run Canadian television had any interest in scheduling it.

So far nobody has stepped up to broadcast or distribute this remarkable story.

Why?

Well, it might just be that those people don’t want Canadians knowing the kind of effect our television has had on the rest of the world. Because then Canadians might start taking an interest in it. And then somebody’d have to make more of it.

And we can’t have that – can we?

On the other hand, it might be that those executives live in the same world as John L. Sullivan, the fictional Hollywood director in Preston Sturges’ “Sullivan’s Travels”.

In that story, Sullivan detests the popular entertainment that has made him a huge success, feeling it's beneath him and wanting to explore the plight of the downtrodden in a film called “O Brother, Where Art Thou”. But by the end of the story he has learned the power and importance of escapist entertainment.

A power exemplified by a Canadian TV series known as “Tropical Heat”.

Here’s a taste of an absolutely original Canadian documentary. Savor what Canadian drama can do.

And Enjoy Your Sunday.

As an added treat --- here’s a clip from one of those original “Tropical Heat” episodes I wrote, starring one of my own childhood cowboy heroes Clint “Cheyenne” Walker.

Silver Sunday

Silver Sunday...where does the week go? Here are three pieces of silver that I'm going to share~The silver champagne bucket I picked up this past summer for $2. I even have the base this stands upon so it can sit beside the table instead of on it. Both for $2 *grinning* The oval bowlie was $1, and the round bowlie that I've got sitting on a silver candle holder was a $1 as well. The mother of pearl buttons are just some of my collection, when I collect something I hoard COLLECT~
If your wanting to see more silver items go to The Gypsy Fish Journal and check out the beautiful photos of the other Silver Sunday Sistas.

Baby its cold outside...

down right freezing if you ask me~ We have been hit with a week long storm here in sunny California, and next week isn't looking any better. I am greatful for the rain as we are in need of filling up our water reserves... but it just makes for a gloomy outlook on everything when you've got so much darkness and cold rainy weather all around you with no end in sight.

Anywho... on the upside, I've been crocheting, painting, sewing and goofing around-- starting all kinds of projects and not finishing a blessed thing. Okokok, I did finish this skull cap for my grandaughter. Here is Miss Chloe Rose modeling the hat I made for her~ The hat took only an hour to finish and the flowers were a few minutes each and I then just stitched them by hand onto the hat. Easy-peasy! I found a free pattern online at "You can make This" Under the shop by category section there is a FREE section where you will find this pattern and the flower pattern that is on the hat as well. The flowers are so darn easy and fast to make, if nothing else go for that pattern as I'm sure you'd find a use for making them. You have to make an account with a password to get the patterns, no biggy, well worth the few seconds that takes. I am pleased as punch with the hat & flowers! Ohhhhhhhhhh for the flower centers I made a chain of 4 stitches and just slip stitched that to the beginning stitch and tied it off, scrunched it into a ball shape and attached it to the center of the flower, thats it!

Paul

“There’s three things that separates a man from all the other animals. One, he’s got thumbs. Two, he knows there’s a future. And three, he can lie like a sonovabitch!”

That’s a line from a play called “Pumpkin” that Paul Quarrington wrote sometime in the late 1970’s.

It was about a bunch of guys from Timmins or North Bay or Sudbury who had come to Toronto to see a Leafs game, a game in which the home team’s Ian Turnbull had scored five points.

According to the NHL record book, that would make it the night of February 2, 1977 when Turnbull racked up the most points ever for a defenseman in a 9-1 thrashing of the Detroit Red Wings. It’s a record that still stands.

The boys have been celebrating in the closed club car of a CN passenger train as it carries them home through the Northern night, back to crummy jobs and uncertain futures that have been momentarily erased by the historic moment they’ve just witnessed. Drinking the only alcohol they can find, somebody’s homemade bottle of fermented pumpkin, they pass the hours telling each other lies.

I don’t know if the play has ever been produced. I don’t know if it’s even been published. What I do know is that, like the river of work that flowed out of Paul over the next 30 years of his life, it was rich with reality, layered with endless imagination and just a whole lot of fun to wallow in.

I got to spend a week with “Pumpkin” when it was workshopped by the Factory Theatre not too long after the date on the calendar it marked. We’d gone through about a dozen new plays during the theatre’s season as the Artistic Director tried to winnow submissions down to those that would make up the coming season and it was just the next one on the pile.

Workshopping plays was a great gig for an actor, because even if you were doing a show that night, Actors Equity required that you get a second pay check.

But you also got to work with the writer in helping his baby learn to walk. There were no performance deadlines or expectations. You could try things dozens of different ways to figure out what clicked and what didn’t. The writer got to hear his words spoken by real people and could revise them overnight or on the fly. And maybe most important for everybody ---  you got to be part of creating something new.

Paul was about my age, an easy going and unassuming guy who’d written a book he was trying to get published and was into music. He said he’d never written a play before and wasn’t sure if what he’d done was how you did it. And even though the concept of Canadian plays was little more than a half dozen years old at the time and we didn’t really know much more than he did, he said he felt humble to be chosen to work with such “veterans”.

I remember glancing up at him as we “veterans” struggled through the first cold table reading. We didn’t know where the thing was going, hadn’t yet got a handle on the tone or the tempo. I’m sure we made it sound far more confusing and formless than it was. But when I looked at Paul, he was beaming from ear to ear. I don’t think I’d ever seen a man look happier.

Later as we wrestled with a scene that just didn’t work, I registered his expression again. It was as if he was in physical pain.

But for the next week, he was tireless in trying new things, polishing moments or making us understand what he’d been after in the writing. His good humor was bottomless. And while a workshop can be Hell for a writer and I’d seen others frustrated and bereft of ideas on what should be done, he never once backed away from attacking the material again and again.

On the final day, we did a full “performance”. Paul had a great laugh that echoed around the theatre as we made our way through the play. But it wasn’t the laughter of a writer enjoying his own creation. It was an honest appreciation of what had been brought to his work by others.

In the end, there was something about “Pumpkin” that Paul still wasn’t happy with and he wanted to hold it back and work on it a while longer. I don’t know if he ever did.

Because not long afterward, Paul began to get noticed. He wrote a novel called “Home Game” that is one of the best books about baseball ever written.

And he wrote “Whale Music” which Penthouse magazine called “The best book about Rock and Roll ever written.”

And he wrote “King Leary”, which anybody will tell you is the best book about hockey ever written.

He went on to write a lot of other great books and some great movies and some great television and a lot of great songs. He won all kinds of awards and prizes and got incredibly famous. But he stayed that easy-going guy with a wonderful smile and a big laugh and endless enthusiasm.

A year ago, just prior to being diagnosed with terminal Lung Cancer, Paul wrote “The Ravine” which he described as semi-autobiographical. "It's about a writer who squanders his talents in television, drinks too much, screws around and ruins his marriage. The reason it's 'semi-autobiographical' is the guy's name is 'Phil.'"

Paul Quarrington died yesterday. But that quote from “Pumpkin” perfectly sums up his life for me.

Right to the end, he used his thumbs and the rest of his digits to write not one but two different screen versions of “The Ravine”.

Even though the doctors said he had no future, he knew he had audiences waiting and recorded and toured with his band.

And in suggesting he had “squandered his talents” he continued to lie like a sonovabitch.

The Shining CITY Falls

The “Save Local TV” campaign took another hit on Tuesday as Rogers Communications, the cable giant that had assured the CRTC that there was no need to give any of their cable money to assist local programming, especially to the stations they themselves owned, gutted the local programming of their own stations due to “new economic realities”.

Six percent of the people who had a job at a CITY-TV stations across the country, delivering local news and information on Tuesday morning, didn’t have them by the time their evening newscasts rolled around. Many of those cut loose were a significant part of the Public face of the stations.

This morning, I went searching for insight into the affair by people who had worked at CITY-TV when it really was the smartest, hippest and most creative television station in the country. Make that --- on the planet.

It’s almost impossible to catalogue how many new things one small local station brought to the TV party or how inspired and privileged and just plain thankful you felt to be part of their audience.

You can find a sampling of the best of those stories here.

But among the list of hits the all-knowing Emperor Google returned during my search was a post I put up on this site 30 months ago.

Now, that kind of thing wakes you up. Because aside from the 3-4 cents a week I bank from all the ads the Emperor runs around here, getting mentioned in searches is about the only reward you earn for giving people something to read on the inner tubes.

I also don’t spend much time re-reading stuff I’ve written (even when rewriting it according to some). But I gave this one a couple of minutes and I was frankly stunned by how intelligent, insightful and prescient it was.

Literally everything that has transpired in the recent sad collapse and destruction of the Canadian television industry was right there in black and white (or white and green to be more precise).

And then I started to ask myself how I’d known all this.

How was I able to accurately map and discover the cause of the decline of an entire group of media empires at the moment when they were strongest and most healthy and while every large fee collecting media consultant, every Bay (or Wall) Street analyst plus every lawyer and accountant doing their due diligence on the deals was confident they were on the threshold of a brave new world – and about to make more money than they all could ever imagine, let alone spend?

I think at a certain level that answer is simple. I work here and I pay attention.

On another level, it’s more complicated. An industry that once had its own personality and character, where you could tell whether you were watching CITY-TV or CBC and knew somebody actually wanted to entertain or enlighten you instead of just hang onto your purchasing power through the next commercial break.

That was a world where bean counters didn’t have more value than those who made the beans and where the regulators weren’t pretentiously thoughtless and able to think beyond where the next lobbyist was taking them for breakfast.

The people who run Canadian networks, those who really make the decisions, apparently don’t have the first clue. Because otherwise what I wrote about CITY-TV two and a half years ago wouldn’t have come true.

And it’s unfortunately clear that unless the people running our networks are soon replaced, there won’t be a need for regulators or “Save Local TV” campaigns.

Global, we’re already having trouble finding your pulse. Time to get your affairs in order.

CTV, you’ve got a year and a half if you’re lucky. Is anybody over there even starting to consider where you’re going to get a third of your programming once NBC disappears after next season?

CBC, don’t sit there sipping your Soy Latte and acting all smug. You’ve got two years tops and all that’s keeping you around that long are contract commitments it’ll be cheaper to run out than pay out.

You’ve all screwed the proverbial Westchester Kennel Show winning pooch in the hope it will keep you going until a business that isn’t even there anymore miraculously turns around.

Rogers, you should be ashamed of yourselves for what you’ve done to a brand that once actually meant something. Why couldn’t you just have kept wrecking a baseball team that was also pretty good before you got your paws on it?

And it didn’t have to happen. You all could have changed your ways. All you had to do was read what I wrote in the sweet summer of 2007.

You can find it here. Maybe it’s still not too late.

Pete A.K.A. Cupid~

Little Pete wanted to play the part of cupid this year. I'm always happy to work with Pete, he is such a little sweetie. I've got him sitting in a round silver cage upon a glittered swing.

The base that the cage is sitting on is glittered with antiqued silver glitter, even though it looks to be gold in the photo.

Pirate chest~

I picked up this chest from a thrift store several months ago for $4.00... and I've finally gotten around to doing something with it. I've made it into a pirate chest for my grandaughter. Ok, more like a princess treasure chest~I started off by painting it pink and distressing it to look like its very old. I then added gold leafing to all the metal hardware on the chest. This is the first time I've ever done gold leafing-- it took FoReVeR and I'm still not 100% happy with it. I'm still finding teeny-tiny spots that need more gold stuck on. Who knew? Oh well, I do like the metal pieces looking like solid gold, so I'll continue working on them. I've went over the top of the gold foil with a glossy finish to help keep the foil from coming off-- and to keep the foil looking like bright gold. I covered the inside with some vintage fabric that I picked up this past summer. I am looking for a small inside lid hinge to keep the heavy lid from coming down and smooshing little fingers. I am hoping one of the craft/hobby stores sells little ones. After that is installed, it will be ready to hold some treasures!

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being on Canadian TV

Although I’m edging to the slide side of the demographic, I’m still a middle aged white guy.

And when, as a producer, I put a project into development with a Canadian television network, especially a project that will require Public money to be realized, I have to sign an agreement which includes an acknowledgement that I will “reflect the diversity of contemporary Canadian society” and that I am also “aware of the need to increase opportunities for all those who may have been traditionally under represented in the Canadian television industry”.

And good on the funding agencies for requiring this kind of commitment!

For it makes no sense that at this point in the 21st century anyone should have their employment or creative opportunities reduced because of their race, gender, age, sexual orientation or a physical disability.

And what better way of affirming our intention of reflecting who we are, what we value and the kind of nation we’re becoming than in the stories we tell ourselves and the world.

If the project being developed is still at the concept stage, this commitment encourages writers and producers to explore the many options available to tell our stories in a way few other countries can. And if the project already has a script fairly locked into launch mode, it encourages diversity in casting and cultural innovation with regard to future story arenas if the contemplated production is a series.

To see this process in action, you need to look no further than the recently launched new season of drama and comedy on the CBC…

The Republic of Doyle

18 to Life

Death Comes to Town

Um….

Wait…

Gee, still a lotta white faces there…huh?

Uh…

Now don’t go getting the wrong idea…

Maybe those shows aren’t really a fair reflection of all the network offerings…

Y’see the CBC has two separate and distinct seasons. And the other one from last Fall featured…

Heartland

Battle of the Blades

Dragon’s Den

Being Erica

This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Er….

Wait!

I’m pretty sure there’s an aboriginal face deep in the background of that “Heartland” picture.

And anybody who knows anything about those retired hockey players on “Battle of the Blades” knows that Tie Domi is a Muslim.

And there’s a very talented black actress who turns up semi-regularly on “Being Erica”.

She’s, uh…

Just…apparently…not…featured in any of the publicity.

Okay, but wait. Let’s not go jumping to any conclusions…

Because CBC has a couple of venerable series that are in their third and fourth seasons respectively…

The Border

Now there’s a show that features about as much white liberal guilt as you can cram into an hour of television. They also found an actress from a visible minority to replace one of a different visible minority when the original one departed the show. And I know for a fact that they have a very good black actor in the regular cast.

He’s, uh…

Just…apparently…not…featured in any of the publicity.

But ignore all that because how could anybody forget…

Little Mosque on the Prairie

The comedy that brought the Canadian Muslim experience to television ---  even if it still isn’t funny after four seasons --- and half the cast remains Caucasian.

All right.

Take a deep breath.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Probably not the sort of thing you’ve taken note of before. But something that a performer “of color”, a writer working hard to create three dimensional characters that don’t come from their personal cultural core or a producer who has signed the affirmation quoted above are all acutely aware.

So what’s going on here?

Is there a subtle form of Racism at work within the Government supported Canadian Broadcasting Corporation?

Are the funding agencies merely paying lip service to their rules? Y’know, one of those government initiatives where it’s implied that everybody gets to play in the sandbox while only a select few actually get the opportunity to build a castle?

Maybe it’s neither of those things.

I mean, there may not be many non-white faces. But you can count the number of Gay characters on one thumb and I don’t see anybody with anything more serious than a lack of comic timing as a disability.

Maybe the executives at the CBC and the six different funding agencies listed in “The Republic of Doyle” end credits were just happy that the show imported an Irish actor in his 50’s, so they could check off the “No Age Discrimination” box on their “under represented” checklist.

Maybe Newfoundlanders as a whole are still considered an “under represented” group, that long list of CODCO and CODCO Alumni shows notwithstanding.

Maybe the confusing brand of “womanizing” lead character Jake Doyle exhibits will soon be explained when we discover he’s Gay --- simultaneously ticking off another of those many “under represented” categories.

Perhaps the whole picture is just skewed by the oddly concocted Provincial tax credit rules that not only boot production out of diversely populated places like Vancouver and Toronto, but also kick them just beyond their nearby suburbs of Burnaby and Brampton where people who look like me are the “visible minority”.

However…

I think the real reason the complexion of Canadian television is as pale as it is comes down to something else.

Because I’m that slide-side middle aged guy, I can vividly recall the late 1980’s, when American studios came here to do such series as “Night Heat” and “Adderly”.

The cast make-up of those series didn’t look much different from the current CBC offerings, and their content usually included one or two “Chinatown” or “Ghetto” episodes a season, meaning the employment opportunities for visible minority talent --- uh --- haven’t really improved in 25 years.

Back then we used to say that our American cultural masters had come here because we were, “Mostly Cheaper. Mostly Spoke English. And most important --- Mostly White!”

It was what American studios thought their audience wanted. And once they hid our quaint multi-hued money and red mailboxes, it was virtually impossible to tell you weren’t really in Kansas.

And maybe that mentality still holds true…

Only this time, it would seem that the executives making that read of the audience are Canadian.

Over the last decade, there has been a slowly growing movement to transition home grown Canadian television from what it has often been to being “more popular” meaning like American shows are popular.

At the same time, there has been a desire to offset the cost of production by pre-selling to an American network and even having them come aboard in the development stages so some of that “popular” stuff rubs off.

So far, that has resulted in one legitimate success story --- “Flashpoint”.

I know, I know, more white people --- and these ones look like they mean business.

The possibility that such success could spread encouraged others to pattern their show models after American series. “Flashpoint” was immediately followed by “The Listener”, a series that coat-tailed the American “detective with special powers” genre, featured lots of white people and pretty much failed both artistically and financially.

Then came “The Bridge”, a derivative police procedural (with mostly white people) which still hasn’t landed an American broadcast slot months after completing filming of its initial season – a malaise now also afflicting “Flashpoint” and other Canadian series that took the “Appeal to the American market first” approach.

And while CBC didn’t have to play the same game, it became clear a couple of seasons ago that they had begun to do just that.

You need look no further than two series which failed to find any kind of audience here.

MVP

Wild Roses

The former was a retread of the British series “Footballer’s Wives” and also tried to channel “Desperate Housewives”, while the latter was a Canadian version of “Dallas”.

Both refused to acknowledge their obvious lineage in their marketing campaigns and neither found purchase with audiences far more familiar with the actual reality of their story arenas of Puck Bunnies and Calgary than the people making them.

In the most recent season launches, the CBC fully embraced the derivative pattern of their content by claiming that “The Republic of Doyle” was “Rockford on the Rock” – an assertion false enough to give Jim Rockford and friends grounds to sue for misrepresentation.

They also openly celebrated getting into bed with ABC in developing “18 to Life” casually ignoring the fact that ABC had slipped away before the marriage could be consummated.

And unless the Comedy Gods grant more smiles than they did in the opening episode of “Death Comes to Town”, that series might be revealed as a jaundiced attempt to garner an American sale on the decades old rep of the once funnier “Kids in the Hall”.

In my estimation, the current snowflake invasion on Canadian television can be laid at the feet of TV executives who don’t know what makes a show popular beyond making it look like a show that was popular in some bygone era.

And the reality of those funding agency rules is that these agencies try very hard not to make programming choices for the submitting networks.

CBC just prioritizes their choices and somehow, this season, there’s only been enough money to pay for the white ones at the top of their list. Those being the shows they think they have a better chance of also selling South of the border.

But the really strange part of that thinking is how much it ignores what American audiences are really watching and what their own studios are preparing for them. 

Would any Canadian network have green-lit a series about a prohibition era bootlegger (“Boardwalk Empire”) or gladiators (“Spartacus: Blood and Sand”) or World War II (“The Pacific”)? Would any of them have taken a chance on “Sons of Anarchy” or “Dexter” or “Big Love”?

Not a fair comparison, those titles being cable offerings?

How about  “Lost”, “Heroes”, “24”, even “The Good Wife” or “Human Target”?

Or would they have pointed to the funding agency rules they’re already ignoring and claimed they couldn’t do series that don’t have a clearly Canadian setting or that negatively reflect on a specific demographic?

In my own opinion, they’re already doing that. Because the Canada I see on CBC is not the one I experience when I walk out my front door. And copying somebody else’s style is not the way you create a definable one of your own.

Meanwhile, even with inflated People Meter numbers to help them along, little of CBC’s product garners anywhere near a million viewers. And nobody is mentioning that some of those new shows have lost half of even that diminished audience before the final credits scroll.

So much for winning any popularity contests.

Meanwhile, nobody covering television seems to have put together that, given the 2-3% of the Canadian population that elusive million viewer threshold represents, there’s a chance hardly anybody who has seen an episode is even coming back the following week. At those anaemic audience levels, the CBC could run an entire season of a series and still not have their show seen by half of the country.

Or – close to the percentage of the population that won’t see anybody who looks anything like them should they bother to tune in anyway.

And in the “More Bad News” to come department, the one show the CBC had which did garner big numbers won’t be coming back.

While I’ve never understood how a far from authentic take on the life of Henry VIII got to be classified as Canadian content, “The Tudors” has reached the end of its run. As the producers put it, “We just ran out of wives”.

But, should CBC find a way to replicate this deal, they might get back to big numbers with the consortium’s next offering, “The Borgias”, starring Jeremy Irons.

Yeah, “The Borgias”.

More white people.