I hope I’m as good at 75 - Michael Atkins

I’m in Halifax. It is Nov. 11. The rain is pelting down from the aftermath of yet another tropical storm making its way up the coast.

The wind is blowing 119 kilometres an hour, regional flights have been cancelled, 6,000 people are without power, some, but not all, outdoor Remembrance Day activities have been taken indoors, and I see below me four members of the Armed Forces walking along Barrington Street in full dress uniform without a coat or umbrella or even a nod to the horizontal rain pummelling them. It is just another day in the park on the East Coast.

In two weeks, I travel to Vancouver to meet a new grandchild, and it will be dark and drizzly and depressing, but the boardwalks will be full of joggers in brightly coloured ponchos, anchored by Nikes and pants that have Lululemon on the butt, all of them ignoring the rain and the darkness. They won’t have seen the sun in a fortnight. Just another day in the park on the West Coast.

I’m lucky. I feel connected to this country from the rain-soaked coasts to the east end of Montreal where I was born, and once survived as a kid on street corners in mangled French that has long since abandoned me, to the view of Ramsey Lake in Sudbury from the roof of the R.D. Parker building at Laurentian University, to the picture of the stirring Giant in Thunder Bay from the Prince Arthur Hotel, that doesn’t stir much after November.

I have flown, hitchhiked, motorcycled, driven and trained across this land and never once tired of its beauty, its people, or the weather.

I remember trying to invest in a halfcocked scheme to launch a restaurant in the old CP train station in Port Arthur called the National Dream. It was all emotion, no plan. Thankfully, it never happened. I didn’t have any money anyway. And yet what a grand name for a restaurant in the middle of the country.

What has me going on this nostalgia trip is the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I’ve grown up with it. From Percy Saltzman, who did the first CBC weather report on TV, to Kevin O’Leary, who belittled one of my investments mercilessly (Ontario’s Own, a new Ontario food manufacturing company) on the Dragons’ Den a month or so ago on the “Mother Corp.” The CBC has never been far away. It is only 12 years older than I am.

This is an enormous and diverse country. Although we are one of the most urbanized countries in the world, our soul is the land. If you live in the cities, you idealize the land and occasionally visit it or just keep it in your mind’s eye as you go about your business, and if you don’t, you just try to survive it.

What bridges the gap between French and English, urban and rural, east and west, north and south, is the CBC. It has never been more important.

As the digital universe buries international boundaries and evades any reasonable national oversight, the answer is a proactive multimedia broadcasting corporation that allows Canadians to see and hear themselves think.

CBC Radio, although diluted by cutbacks, remains extraordinary. I counted 12 programs I love. My only restriction is that I would have to retire to keep up. The shows include: As it Happens; Writers and Company; Definitely not the Opera; Quirks and Quarks; Sunday Morning; Vinyl Café; White Coat, Black Art; the Age of Persuasion; The Debaters; Cross Country Checkup; The Current; and Ideas; all that before you listen to live concerts, and the best daily news available.

It is one of the few Canadian institutions that measure up to our aspirations as a country.
We live in a world where commercial consideration has invaded every corner of our lives. Nothing is as it seems and product placement is considered normal.

The CBC brings relief and integrity to our civil and not-so-civil society. That overused word freedom comes to mind. Not freedom from communists, or terrorists, or religious cults, but freedom from mediocrity, and the commercial imperatives that drive it.

It will take a massive effort to protect this jewel from the coming federal cuts.
I hope you are up to it.

Michael Atkins is the president of Northern Life.

Posted by Vivian Scinto