Making History (Page 2)

In 1979, the CBC took another chance on Starowicz, making him chair of a task force to reform the corporation's TV news and current affairs programming. One result was the controversial move of The National news broadcast from an 11:00 p.m. slot to prime time at 10:00 p.m. and the creation of The Journal, a current affairs and documentary program with Starowicz as executive producer. It was a big gamble, with the CBC betting it could change audience viewing habits by encouraging them to abandon the dramas presented on other networks in favour of the news. The gamble paid off: The National is still a fixture in prime time, The Journal was a critical and popular success for a decade, and Starowicz had firmly established his credentials in television.

Starowicz is currently head of documentary programming for CBC, where he oversees Witness and Life & Times, as well as having produced the acclaimed history of film newsmaking, The Dawn of the Eye, now a part of the curriculum in many journalism schools. He also directs the Canadian History Project, of which A People's History is the first result. Slated next is The Canadian Experience, a series of documentaries that will each focus on a single event or personality. His ultimate objective is to establish the Project as a permanent history department, similar to that which is maintained at the BBC.

"Journalism is a sub-set of the historical profession," he says by way of explaining how his degree in history guided him to his present position. "Good history and good journalism turn things grey in the best sense of the word. I don't like black and white. And I don't like ideology. Most of all, I don't like certitude."

"One of the most fascinating mysteries of our history is that we haven't become Vichy France or Northern Ireland or Yugoslavia," he marvels, "because all the toxic ingredients are there on paper."

For the most part, Starowicz says, Canadians maintain a civility, a generosity toward one another, although he notes, "Gasoline fumes permeate the air and we seem always to be one incident away from ignition." Recollections of the Brockville flag incident - when a Quebec flag was jubilantly stomped for the benefit of television cameras - or the Oka crisis - a bitter land dispute between natives and non-natives over a proposed golf course that left a Quebec provincial policeman dead - bring home how fragile is the peace in which we exist.

Because such divisions run deep, it is a challenge to illustrate to the French or English Canadian who can trace his or her roots back centuries that they own the same past as the Asian or African who has only just struggled across the border. Television can play a significant role in transmitting the message.

"Television is the grammar of our age, it is the marketplace of the people, and it needs to be present in the marketplace of ideas," says Starowicz. "We have the tools to utterly transform ourselves."