Once upon a time, there were people known as Public Letter Writers. They sat in market places, had a storefront in frontier boom towns, operated out of the back booth of a coffee shop where their clients would not be embarrassed to meet with them. Public letter writers […]
How Anne wooed me
By Rod Mickleburgh Social media reaction to the unexpected death recently of Canadian actor Jonathan Crombie, who so memorably played Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables, came almost entirely from the distaff side. Not too many guys were fans of the movie, I guess. Well, I’m a fan. A big one. Like many of my gender, […]
Dear CRTC: More Margaret Atwood won’t save Canadian TV
By Jim Henshaw A decade of boneheaded moves by Canada’s broadcast regulator, the CRTC, were the original inspiration for my blog. And over its life I’ve repeatedly weighed in on just how dim-witted or out of touch our CRTC Commissioners have been with their decisions. The last was a couple of months ago with the first […]
He wrote Canadian film into being
By Jim Henshaw While writer muses come and go at their will, each of us is granted a mentor. Very early on I was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of the best screenwriter Canada has produced, John Hunter. I don’t remember how John and I first met. All I know is he […]
Why I was Charlie Hebdo
By Mark Leiren-Young I’d just read the news about Charlie Hebdo when CBC Radio contacted me. They wanted me to come on the air the next morning and talk about what happened, share a satirist’s perspective. They did a pre-interview with me. I burst into tears. I’ve had people threaten to kill me for my […]
“The indomitable cussedness that made him unique”
By Rod Mickleburgh Paul St. Pierre, B.C.’s superb chronicler of the beautiful Chilcotin and its all-too-human characters, passed away last July. But friends and family waited until Sunday, the weekend of Mexico’s Day of the Dead, to formally say goodbye to the former Vancouver Sun columnist, Liberal MP, gifted writer, and, in the words of […]
Who will tell the CRTC a good story?
By Jim Henshaw Last week, it appeared that CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais had found himself in a socially awkward position. The Writers Guild of Canada had presented their clear and cogent argument on the quality and appeal of Canadian made television. It wasn’t anything Blais hadn’t heard before. And maybe he was tired or maybe […]
Hart Hanson makes his Bones
By Rachelle Stein-Wotten If art can be entertaining, can entertainment be art? Hart Hanson, creator and showrunner of the Fox television series Bones, visited the University of British Columbia recently to discuss his experiences as a nice Canadian boy working in the rough-and-tumble of Hollywood for the past decade. In the course of offering advice […]
Thank god nobody’s reading this
By Mark Leiren-Young Is anything private? A few weeks ago I was asked to fill out a survey from the Writer’s Union of Canada about “Spying and Harassment.” The union was asking writers whether living in a surveillance society was having an impact on their work. Years ago a friend was working on a TV […]
Why I am a disappointment to J. Kelly Nestruck: Part 2
By Frank Moher In the last episode of “Kelly and Me,” I wrote about an exchange via twitter with the Globe and Mail theater critic J. Kelly Nestruck, in which he expressed his disappointment in me for supposing that we might not have the full story of what happened on 9/11. That was over a […]
