CBC Television Series, 1952-1982
by Blaine Allan
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CBC Series Index
GALLERY
Sat 10:00-10:30 p.m., 19 May-11 Aug 1973
Wed 10:00-10:30 p.m., 10 Oct-7 Nov 1973 (R)
Fri 10:30-11:00 p.m., 3 Jan-4 Apr 1975
Fri 5:00-5:30 p.m., 1 Apr-22 Jul 1977 (R)
Sun 2:30-3:00 p.m., 1 Apr-29 Jul 1979 (R)
Sam Levene was the executive producer and David Pears the producer of this
series of half-hour documentary films on a wide variety of relatively light
subjects. The program included Winning Is The Only Thing, a film about a
Manitoba Junior A hockey team, directed by Don Shebib; The Master Blasters,
about a family business that specializes in demolishing buildings with
explosives; Whatever Became of Hollywood?, directed by Eric Riisna, based on
Richard Lamparski's series of books about entertainment personalities of the
past; The Bricklin Story, about Malcolm Bricklin and his automobile, by Pen
Densham and John Watson, co-produced by the CBC and Insight Productions;
Bluegrass Country, about an Ozark Mountain music festival, by Bob Fresco and
Max Engel; and To Be A Clown, Paul Saltzman's look at Richard Pochinko's school
for clowns in Ottawa.
Mon-Fri 4:00-4:30 p.m., 30 Dec 1968-15 Sep 1969
Sat 6:30-7:00 p.m., 13 Sep 1969-4 Sep 1971
Mon-Fri 4:00-4:30 p.m., 15 Sep 1969-14 Jan 1972
Mon-Fri 2:00-2:30 p.m., 17 Jan-27 Nov 1972
Mon-Fri 1:30-2:00 p.m., 27 Nov 1972-14 Sep 1973 (R)
The Galloping Gourmet, a half-hour, weekday show, was the most popular cooking
show of its time. It had originated on Australian television, and then moved
to Canada, with Ottawa's CJOH-TV as its production base.
Graham Kerr (pronounced "care") demonstrated the preparation of dishes that
were exotic, but affordable and accessible. The key to the show's popularity,
however, was Kerr himself. He was a handsome, athletic young man with an
ebullient personality, and an antitraditional approach to cookery and to
cooking for television. He worked very rapidly, with continual, sometimes
mildly racy, chatter. (He was sort of the Frankie Howerd of cooking shows.)
He seemed to slap the dishes together with abandon, using very approximate
measurements. He also always had a glass of wine by his side, from which he
sipped as he worked. At the end of each show, he sat down at a table to eat
what he had prepared, whether the dish had worked or not. As the credits
rolled, he usually pulled someone up from the front row of the studio audience
to share the meal.
The show also took Kerr around the world for film segments that showed him and
his wife, Treena, eating their way through different countries. Treena Kerr
produced the show for Fremantle of Canada.
In April 197l, Graham Kerr suffered severe back injuries in an automobile
accident, and decided to give up the show, which by then had been syndicated to
l30 stations in the U.S.A. and sold to ten other countries. The last season on
CBC reran shows from previous series. More recently, the Kerrs reportedly
became born-again Christians and foreswore alcohol.
Sun 3:30-4:00 p.m., 3 Nov-29 Dec 1957
Paul St. Pierre, journalist and writer of the Cariboo Country series, was the
host of this nature series, produced in Vancouver. The half-hour broadcast
consisted of reports, interviews, and film on outdoor life in British Columbia,
with St. Pierre and his guests, who included authorities on science and
hunting. The first program included a film report on a fishing trip ato Anahim
Lake by St. Pierre, his wife, and their retriever
Thu 5:30-6:00 p.m., 6 Jul-28 Sep 1967
Garnet Anthony, a CBC announcer and former scout, was the host of this summer
series from Edmonton, which celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the Boy
Scouts. In each half-hour program, he or Mike McNamara led a group of scouts
through different practices and procedures for outdoor living. In one program,
for example, Anthony and the troop examined topographical maps and prepared a
packsack for an overnight hike. In another, McNamara and the scouts
demontrated knot-typing by building a "cablecar tramway" over a ravine, and
discussed the uses of rope for safety and in rescue situations.
Sun 12:45-12:59 p.m., 2 Apr-16 Apr 1967
Sun 1:15-1:29 p.m., 30 Apr-25 Jun 1967
Sun 1:45-1:59 p.m., 2 Jul-10 Sep 1967
Sun 1:15-1:29 p.m., 17 Sep-5 Oct 1969
Sun 1:00-1:30 p.m., 1 Mar-29 Mar 1970
Earl Cox was the CBC's principal demonstrator of gardening methods for many
years on shows such as Country Calendar. On this series of fifteen minute
broadcasts from Toronto, Cox was assisted by CBC announcer Harry Mannis, and
discussed gardening topics that pertained to the season, or took viewers to
sites of horticultural interest, such as the Allan Gardens in Toronto. The
program was produced by Jim Ste. Marie of the CBC's farms and fisheries
department.
From 7 January to 3l March 1968, gardening experts from other areas of the
country shared the time slot, and the show's title, Gardening With. . ., was
altered accordingly each week. They included, along with Cox, Stan Westaway in
Winnipeg, Bernard Moore in Vancouver, and Gordon Warren in Halifax. From l to
29 March 1970, Westaway, Moore, and Warren did half- hour gardening shows,
produced by Doug Lower, on Sunday afternoons.
Sat 7:00-7:30 p.m., 1 Jun-29 Jun 1974
In June 1974, pianist and singer Gene DiNovi and singer Jodie Drake starred in
a jazz series, with their rhythm section of Jerry Fuller on drums and Michel
Donato on bass, and a guest list that included Joe Venuti, Clark Terry, Gene
Lees, and Phyllis Marshall. The series was produced by Bob Gibbons.
In its first season, General Motors Presents, a one hour, weekly broadcast, was
produced under the guidance of Esse Ljungh, who had succeeded Sydney Newman as
the CBC's supervising producer of television drama. After one season, however,
Ljungh returned to radio, where he had been highly innovative and successful as
a producer, and his television duties went to Michael Sadlier. Sadlier, too,
lasted for just one season, when he advanced to become the network's television
program director. Edwin Moser, who had been a story editor for the drama
department then took Sadlier's place as supervising producer.
The series included a wide selection of plays by Canadian writers. Among them
were Power To Destroy, a thriller produced by Paul Almond; End Of Summer,
produced by Leo Orenstein and starring Donald Davis; The Flower In The Rock, by
Joseph Schull, produced by Paul Almond; and Charles Jarrott's production of Men
Don't Make Passes, written by Bernard Slade. These programs were also
broadcast to the United States on the ABC-TV network, under the title,
Encounter. The CBC had originally announced that the U.S. network had optioned
thirty-nine weeks of Canadian drama, which, at $35,000 per show, would have
meant a considerable gain in production revenues. However, the ABC series
lasted only through to the first week of November 1958.
The series had a notable record for using Canadian material, although the
producers also found themselves caught in the obligation to produce a weekly
drama, and had to import television scripts from the United States. In the
l958-59 season, twenty-two of the shows were written by Canadians. The
following season, the network boasted that seventy per cent of the scripts were
to be homegrown. That season also included dramas from the earlier years of
television, such as Murder Story, which Leslie Duncan had originally adapted
for television in 1954, and the U.S. writer Reginald Rose's The Incredible
World Of Horace Ford. Other plays included The Desperate Search, by Len
Peterson; The Discoverers, by Max Rosenfeld and George Salverson; Love Story -
l9l0, by Leslie MacFarlane; The Oddball, by Bernard Slade; and Shadow Of A Pale
Horse, by Bruce Stewart; as well as adaptations of C.P. Snow's The New Men
(which opened the season); Somerset Maugham's The Land Of Promise; and Ibsen's
Hedda Gabler. The regular producers were Ronald Weyman, Leo Orenstein, Melwyn
Breen, Basil Coleman, with less frequent contributions from Paul Almond and
Henry Kaplan.
The 1960 season opened with Douglas Rain starring in The Night They Killed Joe
Howe, written by Joseph Schull and produced by Harvey Hart. Comic writer
Bernard Slade returned with a play about a marriage agency, Blue Is For Boys,
produced by Melwyn Breen. Other productions included Friday Deadline, by
Marcel Dube; Kiss Mama Goodbye, by Paul Wayne; Death Is A Spanish Dancer, by
Wendell Mayes; Melwyn Breen's adaptation of William Saroyan's My Heart's In The
Highlands; James Elward's Hide Me In The Mountains, also produced by Breen;
Where I Live, written by Clive Exton and produced by Basil Coleman; Leo
Orenstein's production of The Vigilante, by Arthur Spinner; and The Long Night,
which brought together writer Joseph Schull and producer Harvey Hart once more.
Writers Charles Israel, Moredecai Richler, Mavor Moore, M. Charles Cohen, John
Coulter, and Len Peterson also contributed plays to the series. Besides Hart,
Breen, and Coleman, staff producers included Ronald Weyman, Leo Orenstein, and
David Gardner, and freelancers Norman Campbell, George McCowan, and Paul Almond
also produced shows for the series.
For the summer of 196l, the end of the series, General Motors presented dramas
from the U.K. series Interplay.
Tue 9:00-10:30 p.m., 1 Dec 1953-20 Apr 1954
Tue 9:30-10:30 p.m., 5 Oct 1954-10 May 1955
Tue 8:00-9:00 p.m., 11 Oct 1955-25 Sep 1956
General Motors of Canada took over sponsorship of the CBC Theatre in 1954 and
gave its name to a weekly, one hour dramatic broadcast. The program was
produced under the supervision of Sydney Newman, who had come to the CBC from
the National Film Board. A dynamic and controversial figure, Newman was
responsible for training many of the charter drama producers in Canadian
television and, with story editor Nathan Cohen, for fostering writing in
television drama in this country.
Productions in the 1955 season included the season opener, The Big Leap,
written by Leo Orenstein; Drought, by Alfred Harris and Ed Rollins; Lies My
Father Told Me, by Ted Allan; Never Grow Old, by Stanley Mann; Shadow Of A
Tree, by Joseph Schull; and The Blood Is Strong, by Lister Sinclair.
The following season featured the return of some of these writers, as well as
new contributors: Deadly Is The Egg and On Trial, both by Stanley Mann; When
Soft Voices Die, by Lister Sinclair; The Turning Point, by Nathan Cohen; The
Blindfolded Lady, by George Salverson; and Major Midnight, by Joel Hammil.
The Turning Point was Cohen's first television drama, and the series featured
other such writing debuts, including Mavor Moore's Catch A Falling Star and Leo
Orenstein's Forever Galatea. The most auspicious and successful first work to
air on General Motors Theatre, however, was Flight Into Danger, Arthur Hailey's
story of a passenger flight whose crew was crippled with food poisoning and the
plane that had to be guided to the ground by a former air force fighter pilot
and a flight attendant. Produced in 1956 by David Greene and starring James
Doohan and Corinne Conley, Flight Into Danger became a national success and was
sold to U.S. and British television (and was later adapted into a feature film)
to become and international hit.
During the summer of 1956, General Motors Theatre ran on every second week,
alternating with The Chevy Show. CBC affiliates pressured the network to move
the live broadcast from Tuesday evenings to Sunday nights, where they wanted a
show with broad audience appeal. The CBC agreed to do so, but when General
Motors found out that CBS television had slotted the highly rated quiz show The
$64,000 Challenge in the same time slot (which would affect Toronto audiences,
the prime market, who received the CBS signal from Buffalo), the sponsor became
nervous. After several weeks of negotiations, General Motors pulled out, and
the show disappeared for two years. CBS axed The $64,000 Challenge in autumn
l958, in the middle of the game show scandals, and General Motors of Canada
returned to sponsor Canadian television drama on Sunday nights that same
season, with General Motors Presents.
Wed 10:30-11:00 p.m., 4 Aug-15 Sep 1965
Generation, a public affairs series on youth/adult relations, ran locally on
CBLT-TV Toronto from 1963 (when its host was Lloyd Robertson) to 1966. In the
summer of 1965, the national network ran the series for seven weeks, airing
four new programs and three repeats from the local broadcasts. The 1965 show,
which featured as hosts June Callwood, Bill McVean, and Katie Johnson, was
filmed in locations across Canada. The opening show concerned the problems of
young people having to find jobs and make careers in the Atlantic provinces.
Subsequent programs included an interview with Bill Sands, a former inmate and
author of My Shadow Ran Fast; a discussion with fathers and teenage daughters;
an examination of young Quebecois in the moment of the Quiet Revolution; a
program on two families that were divided over their children's career choices;
and in the concluding program, a look at young Doukhobors in B.C. The
program's producer was Claude Baikie.
Fri 1:30-2:00 p.m., 18 Apr-20 Jun 1975
Sun 12:00-12:30 p.m, 6 Jul-21 Sep 1975
In spring and summer 1975, the CBC aired a series for and about senior
citizens, produced in Ottawa by Paul Gaffney, and with Eustace Jackson and
Fraser Cameron.
Sun 10:00-10:30 p.m., 8 Jul-2 Sep 1979
Singer Gerry Paquin and singer/pianist/composer Gerard "Ziz" Jean were the
bilingual hosts of the Winnipeg edition of Canadian Express. In the summer of
l979, they graduated to host their own musical variety show, which also
featured comic sketches by Jay Brazeau and David Gillies and a guest list that
included Colleen Peterson, Leon Bibb, Pauline Julien, Valdy, Denise McCann,
Joan Armatrading, John Hammond, Graham Shaw, and Charity Brown. Ron Paley was
the musical director. The show, which was taped in front of a studio audience
in Winnipeg, was directed by Bob Weinstein and produced by Marv Terhock.
Wed 8:00-9:00 p.m., 25 Oct-20 Dec 1978
Sun 9:00-10:00 p.m., 15 Jul-14 Oct 1979 (R)
Sun 9:00-10:00 p.m., 21 Oct-16 Dec 1979
The series, A Gift To Last, originated in a special of the same name, produced
for Christmas 1976. In the special, written by Gordon Pinsent, Melvyn Douglas
played Clement Sturgess, an elderly man who looked back on his childhood
Christmases at the turn of the century, and especially to his family hero, his
uncle, the colourful and irresponsible Sergeant Edgar Sturgess of the Royal
Canadian Regiment, played by Pinsent himself.
The series extended the television life of all but one of the Sturgesses of
Tamarack, Ontario. Harrison Sturgess, played by Alan Scarfe, died in the first
episode. He was survived by his wife Clara, played by Janet Amos, their
children Clement and Jane, played by Mark Polley and Kate Parr, mother Lizzy,
portrayed by Ruth Springford, and brothers James and Edgar, played by Gerard
Parkes and Gordon Pinsent. Harrison, the most mature and stable of the
brothers, stood in contrast to the meek and conservative James on the one hand
and the rowdyman Edgar on the other. However, the death brings together the
disparate members of the family to support the widowed Clara and the two young
children.
Over twenty-one episodes, the series traced the years l899 to 1905 as seen
through the experiences of an Anglo-Saxon family in small-town soutnern
Ontario. In later episodes, Edgar tried to fight in the Boer War, and found
himself stopped in his first attempt when he caught the measles. He
subsequently succeeded in leaving Tamarack for combat duty. Clara was the
subject of romantic interests. She married John Trevelyan, the grocer, played
by John Evans, and, by the fifth episode, had their first child. The central
episode of the series, which won an ACTRA award as Best Television Program of
the year, was the one in which Edgar finally married Sheila, the Sturgesses'
maid, played by Dixie Seatle.
By the final season, the now-married Edgar was serving in the militia and had
to adjust to his new life. James had become the mayor of Tamarack. John had
built his business, and Clara was suffering ill health, and succumbed to
consumption (largely so Janet Amos could be written out of the script for eight
episodes while she toured the U.K. with the company of Theatre Passe Muraille).
The series, which had gained widespread popularity, ended when Pinsent, who
with Peter Wildeblood had written the show, decided that the three years he had
given to A Gift To Last was enough. Besides its high ratings in Canada, by
l979 the CBC had sold the program to television stations in the U.S.A. and
networks in Belgium, Australia, Ireland, and South Africa.
A Gift To Last had a number of directors, including Sheldon Larry, Jim Swan,
Ron Mersha, Jack Nixon-Brown, and Herb Roland, who was also the show's
producer. Robert Allen was the executive producer for CBC Drama.
Photo (courtesy of CBC) shows Gordon Pinsent, Mark Polley
(left).
Sun 2:00-2:30 p.m., 7 Jan-25 Dec 1968
This half-hour musical show from Vancouver was neither a documentary portrait
of Gilbert and Sullivan, nor a series of abridged versions of their operettas
collapsed into thirty minute time slots. It did present highlights from the
Victorian stage shows in a studio setting, with a loose connective thread to
tie the numbers together. Sam Payne, the show's host and narrator, played a
character who regretted the passing of the Victorian age, and imagined the
different settings and situations represented in the Gilbert and Sullivan
plays. The first show, for example, set Payne in a wax museum-like setting in
which the statues came to life and performed numbers from The Yeomen of the
Guard, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, and other operettas for him.
Guests on this show included Edward Greenhalgh, Judith Forst, Harry Mossfield,
and Clifford Cox.
Payne collaborated with writer David Kendall and producer Neil Sutherland to
create this six part series.
Going Great won the Children's Broadcast Institute Award in 1983 for Best
Network Television Program. It starred actor Chris Makepeace in a magazine of
features on young people across Canada. He visited and interviewed such people
as singers Natalie Simard and Celine Dion, the bat boy for the Montreal Expos,
a teenage sheep farmer in Nova Scotia, and actor Jennifer Beals. Going Great
was a coproduction of the CBC and Cineworld, Inc.
With Denyse Ange.
Mon 5:00-5:30 p.m., 14 Oct-23 Dec 1957
The title of this half-hour show referred to a name for the Elizabethan era.
Like the theatre of that period, this show featured child actors, who performed
plays for young television viewers. The show was produced in Montreal by Alan
Brown and directed by Valentine Boss, with costumes by Jacqueline Boss, the
director's mother. The stories included The Empress And The Four Seasons,
about a young ruler who wished to control the seasons as well as her empire;
and adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen and Oscar Wilde's
The Infanta's Dwarf, called The Birthday Of The Infanta.
Fri 12:15 a.m., 19 Sep 1980-5 Feb 1982
Fri 12:30 a.m., 12 Feb-27 Aug 1982
Fri 12:00 a.m., 3 Sep-8 Oct 1982
Thu 12:00 a.m., 14 Oct-21 Oct 1982
A late night series of feature films, Golden Oldies, which originated in
Toronto, was available to a limited network of CBC stations and affiliates in
Ontario.
Sat 6:30-6:45 p.m., 2 Apr-25 Jun 1960
Wed 7:45-8:00 p.m., 5 Jul-13 Sep 1961
Sat 6:30-6:45 p.m., 7 Apr-30 Jun 1962
Sun 5:00-5:30 p.m., 4 Jul-26 Sep 1965
Stan Leonard, with the help of commentator Ted Reynolds, offered several,
television courses in basic golf from the Point Grey Golf Course. The courses
were divided into thirteen, fifteen minute lessons (the last series was
presented in half-hour segments). Doug Gillingham produced the series in
Vancouver.
Mon 9:00-9:30 p.m., 17 Jun-12 Sep 1968
Mon 9:00-9:30 p.m., 30 Jun-8 Sep 1969
Producer Terry Kyne assembled The Good Company, a troupe of twenty-five singers
and dancers age sixteen to twenty-five, out of about l50 performers who
auditioned for a Juliette special, broadcast in May 1968. Some had had
professional experience, dancing on television or with the National Ballet,
many were still in school. The numbers were cut down to twenty for the summer
series, a freewheeling musical variety show that Kyne produced for the first
summer and Dave Thomas produced for the second. The show's writers were Mark
Shekter and Alan Thicke, and the musical director was Norman Amadio.
See Hans In The Kitchen.
Wed 9:00-10:30 p.m., 12/19/26 Mar 1980
A Good Place To Come From, a series of three, ninety minute programs, was based
on stories by Morley Torgov, collected in a book by the same name, about
growing up Jewish in Sault Ste Marie. The first story, Today I Am A Fountain
Pen, took place in 1939, and concerned family secrets. Esther and Moise
Yanover try to conceal their love of bacon from their ten year old son Irving,
while their Ukrainian maid, Annie, tries to keep hidden the fact that she is
seeing an Italian hockey player, a secret she shares with Irving. Helen Burns
played Esther, Harvey Atkin played Moise, Hollis McLaren was Annie, and Allen
Levson played Irving.
In A Rosen By Any Other Name, which takes place in 1943, Barney Rosen, played
by Peter Boretski, decides to change his name to "Royal" when someone throws a
brick through the window of his tailor shop. The dilemma is solved by his son
Stanley, played by Jeff Lynas, in time for his bar mitzvah.
The third episode, The Chopin Playoffs, brings characters from the first two
together when, in 1948, Irving Yanover and Stanley Rosen square off in a piano
competition for a music scholarship and for the love of Fawn, played by Ella
Collins.
The series was produced by Robert Sherrin.
Tue 8:00-8:30 p.m., 4 JUl-2 Aug 1972
A thirty minute musical variety show, Good Times starred singer Catherine
McKinnon, guitarist Jim Roberts, and The Family Six, a musical group composed
of six brothers and sisters (Edmund, David, Dennis, Roland, Therese, and Noella
Dandeneau of Fisher Branch, Manitoba). The show also featured an orchestra led
by the show's musical director, Dave Shaw. Good Times was produced by Dave
Robertson in Winnipeg.
Various Days and Times, 5 Sep-29 Oct 1978
In this feature, broadcast during halftime intermissions in 1978 CFL games
carried by the CBC, retired football players examined key decisions they had to
make during their careers. Host Tom McKee showed films of the games and asked
viewers to call the next play. After the actual play was shown, the
quarterback explained the reasons and the results. Players featured included
Jerry Keeling, Bernie Faloney, Russ Jackson, Jackie Parker, Nobby Wirkowski,
Sam Etcheverry, Kenny Ploen, Don Jonas, Don Getty, and Peter Liske.
Fri 9:00-9:30 p.m., 2 Mar-29 Jun 1956
Fri 9:00-9:30 p.m., 5 Oct-2 Nov 1956
Fri 9:00-9:30 p.m., 2 Nov 1956-21 Jun 1957
It was estimated that the CBC and sponsor Ford Motor Company of Canada spent
$20,000 per week on Graphic, a thirty minute magazine-style show. The CBC had
taken its cameras and microphones outside the studios and into the streets for
remote broadcasts for several years, but Graphic attempted to make the
spontaneity and immediacy of that approach and essential part of television
broadcasting. In format and aim, it emulated such U.S. programs as See It Now
and Person To Person, although it also strove for distinctly Canadian stories.
Each show included three or four items of public interest, and wherever
possible, the producers tried to bring them to viewers live, as they happened.
For the most part, the show featured interviews, conducted and linked by host
Joe McCulley. A battery of producers and other personnel worked on the
program: writer Norman Klenman (l956) and Ron Krantz (l956-57), producer Peter
Macfarlane, supervising producer Bill Bolt, coordinating producer Donal Wilson,
editorial supervisor Norman DePoe, and executive producer Sydney Newman.
Ford had originally wanted the show to be called Ford Graphic (as a
companion/competition to General Motors Theatre), but the CBC refused to let a
sponsor attach its name to a public affairs show. Ford relented and agreed to
sponsor the show for thirteen weeks. As Alex Barris tells the story, Ford's
agency asked that host McCulley advise viewers to drive safely, with the
thought of the upcoming National Safe Driving Week in mind. This was
interpreted as an added commercial message for Ford and excluded from the
program. Before the CBC could relent and apologize to Ford, however, the auto
manufacturer had decided not to renew its option on the show and dropped out as
its sponsor. (The Pierce-Arrow Showroom Is Leaking [Toronto: Ryerson Press,
l969], pp. l22-23)
The Great Canadian Culture Hunt
Wed 8:30-9:30 p.m., 10 Mar-24 Mar 1976
Wed 8:00-9:00 p.m., 31 Mar-14 Apr 1976
Gordon Pinsent was the host of a six part series of one hour documentaries on
different aspects of Canadian culture. The first film in the series examined
the relations of politics and culture, and included interviews with Secretary
of State Hugh Faulkner, Peter C. Newman, the editor of Maclean's, artist Greg
Curnoe, Hamilton Southam, the director of the National Arts Centre, comic Yvon
Deschamps, television personality and later politician Lise Payette, Vancouver
playwright Herschel Hardin, and Peter Swann, the former director of the Royal
Ontario Museum. The second film, Home Movies, looked at the Canadian
filmmaking industry, and the lack of consistency that government and business
have provided it. The third segment concerned the music industry, and included
interviews with performers such as Anne Murray, Bruce Cockburn, and Murray
McLauchlan. In the fourth program, writers such as Margaret Atwood, Robert
Kroetsch, Irving Layton, Michael Ondaatje, and Audrey Thomas talked about the
state of writing and the publishing industry and their prospects. The fifth
program concerned theatre, and included the views and experiences of writers
such as Michel Tremblay, Michel Garneau, Carol Bolt, David French, David
Freeman, and directors Bill Glassco, Paul Thompson, and Martin Kinch. The
final program dealt with television, and centred on the research and opinions
of U.S. scholar George Gerbner, dean on the Annenberg School of Communications.
The series producer was George Robertson. The individual programs were
produced by, in order of airing, Dave Robertson, Bob Ennis, Robert Patchell,
Jesse Nishihata, Allan King, and Larry Gosnell.
Sat 4:00-4:30 p.m., 16 Jul-17 Sep 1977
The Great Canadian Escape, a series of eight, thirty minute programs produced
in Edmonton, provided novices with instructions in popular outdoor recreational
activities, such as lake and fly fishing, camping, backpacking, tenting,
caoeing, and trail riding. The guides were Russ Thornberry, columnist for the
Edmonton Journal, and broadcaster John Wells.
Wed 8:00-9:00 p.m., 17 Jan-21 Mar 1979
Wed 8:00-9:00 p.m., 2 Jan-20 Feb 1980
Tue 10:00-11:00 p.m., 13 Jan-31 Mar 1981
Thu 8:00-9:00 p.m., 14 Jun-4 Mar 1982
The CBC drew inspiration from the memoirs of John Wilson Murray to create the
character of Inspector Alistair Cameron, played by Douglas Campbell. Murray,
generally thought of as Canada's first detective, was appointed detective to
Ontario's Department of Justice in l875. Cameron, his fictional counterpart,
solved crimes all around Ontario in the Victorian era in this light, one hour,
weekly whodunit. The program featured a wide selection of guest appearances
from Canada's character actors, including Ted Follows, Julie Amato, Hugh
Webster, Sandy Webster, Sean Sullivan, Ken Pogue, and Barrie Baldaro. The
Great Detective was directed by William Hayes and produced by Peter Wildeblood.
Sat 9:00-10:30 p.m., 20 Apr-
Sat 9:00-10:30 p.m., 19 Apr-27 Sep 1958
Sat 9:00-10:30 p.m., 11 Apr-25 Apr 1959
Sat 9:00-10:30 P.m., 2 May 1959-24 Sep 1960
Fri 11:37-1:00 a.m., 22 Apr-7 Oct 1961
Sat 9:00-10:30 p.m., 20 Apr-28 Sep 1963
Sat 8:30-10:30 p.m., 2 May-4 Jul 1964
Sat 9:00-11:00 p.m., 11 Jul-3 Oct 1964
Sat j8:30-10:30 p.m., 1 May-10 Jul 1965
Sat 9;00-11:00 p.m., 17 Jul-16 Oct 1965
Sat 8:30-10:30 p.m., 7 May-18 Jun 1966
Sat 9:00-11:00 p.m., 25 Jun-10 Sep 1966
Sat 8:30-10:30 p.m., 17 Sep-15 Oct 1966
Sat 9:00-11:00 p.m., 24 Jun-2 Sep 1967
Sat 8;30-10:30 p.m., 9 Sep-7 Oct 1967
Sat 8:30-10:00 p.m., 18 May-5 Oct 1968
Sat 8:30-10:30 p.m., 3 May-4 Oct 1969
Sat 8:30-10:30 p.m., 18 Apr-3 Oct 1970
For fourteen springs and summers, the CBC ran feature films in the Saturday
night time slot reserved for hockey in the autumn and winter. From 1957 to
l959, the host was Fred Davis.
Wed 5:00-5:30 p.m., 22 Jan-27 Jan 1975
A series of two, half-hour broadcasts.
Sun 7:00-7:30 p.m., 23 Jun-28 Jul 1968
Sun 4:00-4:30 p.m., 3 Aug-14 Sep 1969
Sun 5:30-6:00 p.m., 12 Jul-27 Sep 1970
A summer replacement, The Group was a musical variety show produced by Dale
Nelson in Winnipeg. It featured Reg Gibson, Karen Marklinger, and a ten piece
band called, if you can believe it, The Sassy Brass of Bob McMullin. McMullin
was also the show's musical and choral director. The Group Singers were Hector
Dremner, Ken Johnson, Sam McConnell, Steve Walsh, Lorraine Grosko, Beverley
Mazer, Carole West, and Wendy Wilson, who sang as an ensemble backup group, and
were also given solo spots. Their guests included Buddy Victor, Lucille Emond,
Anita Gass, Ray St. Germain, Yvette, and Georges LaFleche.
The first series of The Group was followed by another musical variety show to
round out the summer: Hits A Poppin, from Vancouver.
Sun 9:00-9:30 p.m., 4 May-30 Nov 1969
Children's programme by Clemence Desrochers. The adventures of a cat (Grujot)
and a rabbit (Delicat.) Catchphrase: "C'est comme l'oeuf de Chriiiiiiiiiiistophe Colombe!"
Sun 1:00-1:30 p.m., 5 Oct 1958-31 Jan 1959
In this thirty minute panel game show for Sunday afternoons, lawyer Duncan Crux
presented a case to a jury, which also saw a version of the trial acted out
before it. They jury and the viewers then had the opportunity to make a
verdict and compare theirs to the actual verdict in the case. J. Stot produced
the show in Vancouver.
Fri 8:00-8:30 p.m., 2 Jul-6 Aug 1954
Guess My Story was a precursor of Front Page Challenge. This quiz show from
Toronto featured a chairman and four guests, one of whom had played a part in a
recent news story. The three panelists had to guess, through a series of
questions, who the challenger and what the story were. Guests were brought
from all parts of the country and, if they might be easily recognized, they
would wear masks.
Fri 8:00-8:30 p.m., 6 Jul-14 Sep 1956
Fri 9:00-9:30 p.m., 21 Sep-28 Sep 1956
During the summer of 1956, theatre or radio directors were invited to adapt a
production to television for this thirty minute broadcast. Selections included
Ken Withers's staging of Pick-A-Bone, from radio's Fiddle Joe's Yarns; An Eye
For An Eye, adapted from Susan Glaspell's Trifles by Diana Maddox; Club
Fighter, by Pamela Lee, directed by Ken Davey; A Night At The Inn, directed by
Norma Springford; Etc., directed by George Bloomfield from a script by Max
Cohen; and Chekhov's The Boor, directed by Ray Cunnington. Humphrey
Hinshelwood produced Guest Stage in Montreal.
Return to CBC Series Index
GUEST STAGE
Sun 7:00-8:00 p.m., 22 Jan-19 Feb 1978
