Our week of stewardship on Micou's Island

For a week in August, my family served as stewards on Micou's Island. It's a 22-acre jewel in St. Margaret's Bay -- one of the few islands in the bay that's not in private hands.

Being stewards meant living in the 1850s house on the island (cold running water, composting toilet, wood-fired cook stove), greeting visitors, and making sure people respected the island environment.

I also brought along a broadcast-quality recorder and made a radio documentary about our experiences -- which turned out to be a lot more eventful than we ever would have expected.

The documentary aired in Nova Scotia on the CBC Radio One program Mainstreet. You can listen to it here in mp3 format.

Internet access at school

Maybe an odd topic for the middle of the summer, but I'm behind in putting this one online.

Back at the end of June, I did a short segment on the local CBC afternoon show with host Carmen Klassen.

The subject was the way the Halifax Regional School Board filters access to the Internet. They use software from a company called Netsweeper to control access to web content that may be offensive or that contravenes board policy.

The problem? The same filters apply to everyone, from 6-year-olds to staff.

The most shocking thing I found in doing this piece is just how reticent -- or maybe even frightened -- school staff are to say anything critical. I came across several teachers who were frustrated with the system, but who wouldn't agree to speak in public about it. The one who did told me she would probably get in trouble. 

Meanwhile, the principals at two local high schools outright refused me access to their premises, even to interview students or to test out the system in their computer lab.

I have to give credit to Gerard Costard, the man who manages the system for the board. He'd been excoriated in two previous pieces on the subject by writer Bruce Wark, but he was still friendly and happy to give me an interview. He even set up a laptop in his office with the filters active so I could try out the system.

You can listen to the segment here.

Thursday Think Tank

Every Thursday, CBC Radio's Sounds Like Canada features the Thursday Think Tank.

The Think Tank brings together people with basically nothing in common, to comment on issues they may or may not know something about.

The most entertainment value comes from artist Carolina Echeverria, who can be counted on to kick things off with a completely wacko argument.

Today's topic was youth crime. She started by telling us the first-round hockey riots in Montreal showed that the true pulse of Canada is rage, and that once hockey fans left the Bell Centre their true emotions showed. She went on to bring up the pepper spraying of protesters at the 1997 APEC summit, the war in Afghanistan, old people dying alone in nursing homes, and... well, I lost track.

I did note, though that she thinks community service is good and jail time bad, although on a previous panel on crime she'd said that we should simply accept that some kids are born bad and that parents should crack down on their teens hard enough that the teens will hate them.

I'm sympathetic to people looking at the big picture and trying to connect disparate threads into a coherent argument. But coherent this ain't.

Nobody said you needed consistency or being able to put together a decent argument in order to be an artist. But those things might be a little bit helpful if you're trying to be some kind of pundit.

You don't have to be on the show to get your message across

I'm noticing a trend I don't like on CBC Radio's The Current. The show contacts a government agency or manufacturer to talk about a controversial subject. They refuse, but send a prepared statement, and host Anna Maria Tremonti (or whoever is sitting in for her) reads it, without comment.

Why?

If you want to talk to a company about why there is lead in their lipstick, they should come on and face the questions. If they don't want to do that, they shouldn't get to present their unedited point of view. Otherwise, journalism is simply delivering spin.

I know, that's what journalism does a lot of the time -- but The Current is a pretty serious show (unless you get Hana Gartner talking about poo). And they should be telling their potential interview subjects that the only way to get their message across to listeners is to come on the show.

Randy Neily

About a month ago, I interviewed Randy Neily. I was working on a documentary for the CBC Radio One show Maritime Magazine. The piece was called "Where There's Smoke, Will There Be Firefighters?" and you can listen to it here.

Randy was the deputy fire chief in Blandford, whose volunteer fire department the documentary profiled. A few weeks later, Randy passed away (there's a Facebook group celebrating his life here).

On the night I was at the Blandford fire station recording a lot of my material I wanted to speak to Randy, but something about him intimidated me. He was physically large, and didn't do a lot of the social niceties with me. We were introduced, and he went back to his business without showing much interest. I approached fire chief Philip Publicover and said I'd like to interview Randy but was feeling a bit intimidated. Did he think Randy would be amenable?

Philip laughed, said Randy might seem intimidating but wasn't. On the other hand, he didn't know how much he'd be willing to talk. Later, I approached Randy, and after some initial hesitation he agreed to be interviewed.

We sat in the fire station office, Randy under a poster for the movie Backdraft, and talked for half an hour. A couple of times we'd seem to be done and I'd turn off the recorder, but then the conversation would carry on and I'd start recording again.

In the end, I didn't wind up using any of those interviews (although if you listen really, really closely you can hear Randy laughing in the background at one point). There just wasn't room. But I learned a lot, and it was helpful.

Randy was a volunteer firefighter, paramedic and former firefighter instructor. He visited every single fire station in Nova Scotia (there are over 300 of them) and had taken photos at each place. I suggested it might make a good book -- and he said he had thought about that. I hope that archive of photos winds up somewhere where they'll be appreciated.

Here's a short clip of Randy expressing his worry about the future of the fire service, and his photos.

Leaving Fort McMurray

CBC radio news ran a story this morning on the cost of living in Fort McMurray. The intro said that the high cost of living was too much for many residents, and that some were thinking of coming back east.

So, does this mean that the Nova Scotia government's efforts to entice people to give up their jobs and come home was working?

Don't pat yourself on the back yet, Premier MacDonald. The story quoted one man, retired, who has been in Fort McMurray more than 20 years and is now finding that he can't really afford to live there, so he may sell his trailer and move with his girlfriend to Newfoundland.

I guess we can expect the local labour shortage to continue a while longer.

Where there's smoke... will there be firefighters?

"Where There's Smoke, Will There Be Firefighters?" my radio documentary on the challenges facing volunteer fire departments, is now online  It was produced by Christina Harnett, aired on CBC radio regionally, and runs 25 minutes.

The piece focuses on the fire station in Blandford, Nova Scotia, but a lot of the issues they face hold true for other departments across the country.

Listen to it here.

My volunteer fire service story on CBC Radio One's Maritime Magazine, Feb 24

A few months ago, I heard Blandford, Nova Scotia fire chief Philip Publicover on the CBC radio news. He was talking about the problems he faced in recruiting and keeping new members for his community's volunteer fire service.

I wanted to know more, so I pitched the CBC a story on the challenges facing rural fire departments.

The result is my half-hour documentary, "Where There's Smoke... Will There Be Firefighters?"-- which airs on CBC Radio One's Maritime Magazine, Sunday, February 24 at 8:30 AM. The producer is Christina Harnett.

The show focuses on Blandford, and how the challenges it faces are emblematic of challenges faced by fire services throughout the region -- and the country. I had no idea that the vast majority of the fire services in the country are volunteer, or that sometimes stations are so broke they can barely put fuel in the trucks.

I hope you can tune in. If you're outside the Maritimes, it will probably be too early for you. The piece will eventually go online, and I'll post a link.

Writin' your life away

The CBC is running a contest called Canada Writes. One of the rights the Writes people want (you agree to it by entering) is that contestants waive their moral rights.

Here's what I wrote the CBC about it, not that I expect it to either make a difference or get me a response.

The Rules and Regulations for Canada Writes include the following sentence:

"By entering the contest, each participant shall waive any and all moral rights over his/her entry."

I can understand that every legal department wants to protect itself from every circumstance, but I cannot understand why CBC would insist on this right.

Moral rights have no financial value. They include a) the right of the creator to be identified as such; b) the right to the integrity of the work (so that it is not altered or mutilated in a way that damages the creator's reputation); and c) the right of the creator to refuse to have the work used in a way that damages his or her honour or reputation.

The CBC does not require any of these in order to run its competition. Once a creator has given up moral rights, the CBC could, conceivably, sell contestants' entries to advertisers, publish entries written by one person under another's name, or mashup entries until they were unrecognizable.

There would likely be an outcry if the CBC did any of these things. So why insist that people give up the most fundamental right related to something they have created? It is obnoxious.

If it is too late for this year, perhaps the rules could be revised prior to next year's competition. I can't imagine anyone who truly understood the impact of waiving moral rights wanting to enter.

Will the moral rights clause stop people from entering this contest? Yeah, right. But it lowers the bar even further -- like, below the floor -- when it comes to acting decently. Once enough people sign over these rights it becomes no big deal. And it should be a big deal.

Have I signed away moral rights in the past? Yes, occasionally. But only if I really, really trusted the clients and I was getting paid generously. I've also successfully fought off moral rights clauses in freelance writing contracts before.

Takes one to know one department

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum (the man apparently responsible for the words "Axis of" in the phrase "Axis of Evil") talking about Ervand Abrahamian, co-author of the book Inventing the Axis of Evil on CBC Radio's The Current:

"Unfortunately, you can find apologists for anything."

He should know.

Prairie Giant

The Tommy Douglas mini-series Prairie Giant, which the CBC pulled from circulation (and which I wrote about here) is going to be broadcast by Vision TV, CBC News reports.

What I found interesting in the story is this sentence:

Starring stage actor Michael Therriault as the title character, Prairie Giant won awards and received praise from a number of critics. However, historians panned it for its depiction of former Saskatchewan premier Jimmy Gardiner, a Liberal. (Emphasis added.)

Historians? As I understand it, there was only one historian who panned it -- and he or she was hired by the CBC and published his or her criticisms in an anonymous report.

The Greatest Canadian update

CBC has sold Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, meaning it will get international distribution. (H/T to Tod Maffin's Inside the CBC blog for pointing to the story.)

Earlier, CBC had distanced itself from the mini-series because of what it said were factual errors. Writer Bruce Smith, meanwhile, said it was the most meticulously researched work he'd ever done.

I interviewed Bruce last year for a story in Canadian Screenwriter. Here's an excerpt, with a link to the full story below.

“I have no beef with the Gardiner family. I’m sorry they’re upset, but this stuff should be debated, and if they want to defend Jimmy Gardiner they should be able to defend him in public. The point is this stuff should be defended in public,” Smith says. “If some academic wants to criticize it he should have the simple decency to do so under his own name. That’s all. It’s very simple. My name is on it. The name of everyone who worked on the film is on it. We’re not trying to hide anything–we’re trying to put it on television and let people argue about the history of Canada.”

Full story here.

Bathroom Brouhaha

I never realized the politics of using the disabled washroom/stall were so contentious.

I never realized there were politics connected to it at all.

Are these washrooms a decidated resource for the disabled - like a parking spot - making their use by the able-bodied immoral or illegal? Or are they like wheelchair ramps - allowing accessibility to everyone?

Full post from CBC'er Paul Gorbould's blog here.

Bye Bye Promo Girl

CBC's Promo Girl is gone.

I didn't mind her voice at first, though it did grate after a while (too much exposure!). Promo guy won't likely be an improvement unless they give him some better writing to work with.

High Steaks Online

"High Steaks" -- my 12-minute radio documentary on what happens tome and my family when I start to contemplate having a steak after 20 years as a more-or-less vegetarian -- is now online here. Click the link to stream it, or right-click to save to your computer and listen later.

The photo is from Highview Farms -- the place where the first steak in the story came from.

Ex-vegetarians

One of the things I've learned from talking about my Outfront story on CBC Radio is just how many of the people I know are ex-vegetarians. They range from the relative who was a vegetarian in university "the way some people are bisexual when they're students," and the friend who was vegetarian for a year, "except for pizza slices when I was drunk," to people who were solidly committed to not eating meat for many years.

The other thing that amazes me is finding out how easy it was for some people to make the transition from one kind of diet to another. Meanwhile, I've fretted and dithered for ages. And if CBC hadn't accepted my proposal, I would probably be fretting and dithering still.

One thing I've never understood is the militant vegetarians and militant meat-eaters who you will, very boringly and predictably, find on any web forum in which the topic comes up.

Like this one, although it has more than the usual share of thoughtful posts.

I have to say, I find the militant meat eaters scarier. Take this guy, who signs himself "Carnivore."

Vegetarians, PETAssholes and Such-Like Filth Cannot be Reasoned With

Because their food preferences are a RELIGION with them, every bit as much as the fundies. And they want to FORCE their religion on the rest of us.

Some of us won't go quietly. They would be safer trying to take a steak away from a tiger than from me.

Tigers don't carry guns.

High Steaks Documentary

My 12-minute radio documentary "High Steaks" is on CBC Radio One's Outfront tonight, at 8:43 PM. (If you've got satellite, it's on Sirius 137, but I can't tell you what time.)

Here's what the website says about tonight's show:

Monday February 19, 2007

High Steaks
by: Philip Moscovitch

Philip Moscovitch gave up eating meat 20 years ago. Now, he's feeling the siren call of bacon, sausages and beef. His vegetarian partner and children aren't thrilled. Find out what happens when he heads out to buy his first steak in two decades.

Producers: Laura Chapin & Stewart Young

I didn't get much of an opportunity to work with Stewart Young, because he got shifted to another job, but Laura Chapin was fantastic. Relationships with producers can be tricky, but Laura seemed to make it easy.

Recording for the show was done with a Marantz digital recorder, and I did the sound mix using Audacity, which you can download for free from here.

There is some music in the piece: part of Vegetarian Mumbo Jumbo by NOFX, a couple of clips from Chicken Cordon Blues by Steve Goodman, and an excerpt from Steven's Blues, by my buddies The Reluctants.

Worse than promo girl

That CBC radio promo for the Gill Deacon show. Can I stand to listen to it one more time?

Apparently the show features "intriguing people" who tell "fascinating stories."

Number 1: Intriguing and fascinating are probably the two most tired words in the copywriter's lexicon. Absolutely everything is either intriguing or fascinating. If it's not, it's edgy. Or maybe it's all three.

Number 2: What the heck is CBC radio doing promoting the hell out of a TV show? Hello? I am listening to the radio. How about promoting what else will be on the radio. I might find that very intriguing, and perhaps even fascinating.

Google "intriguing and fascinating" to find out just how much intriguing and fascinating stuff there is out there. Here is my favourite:

FASCINATING NEW MASONIC HALL OPENED BY HRH DUKE OF KENT

Beamish launched its most intriguing and fascinating attraction to date on 19th April 2006, with the opening of the “brand new” Masonic Hall – the first to permanently open to the public in Europe !

HRH The Duke of Kent (Head of the United Grand Lodge of Freemasons in England) opened the Masonic attraction along with hundreds of Freemasons in full regalia. The Freemasons processed and gathered along The Town Street at Beamish. This was the largest public gathering of Freemasons in full regalia in recent memory !

The intriguing Masonic Hall is a truly authentic recreation of an early 20th century Masonic Hall – with a ‘real' fine frontage that has come from a former Masonic Hall in Park Terrace, Sunderland, taken down and rebuilt at Beamish. A simply stunning Masonic Hall has been built behind the frontage with a breath-taking interior complete with period décor and rare Masonic furnishings, paintings and artefacts, providing a unique insight into the world of the Freemasons in 1913.