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Jowi Taylor is a Canadian hero.
Seriously. The host of CBC Radio’s Global Village launched an incredible project to bring together the elements of Canadian music into a metaphor borne in string and wood: The ultimate Canadian guitar.
I’ll have more on this later. First, check out the Six String Nation podcasts.
This weekend, Globe and Mail scribe Andrew Ryan wondered aloud what it would be like to have a made-in-Canada soap opera. In it, he cited the two existing daytime dramas on CBC Television — 49th and Main and North/South.
In it, he writes:
North/South received a brief daytime tryout last month. The show was set in the Halifax construction industry and featured top-notch writing and a respectable Canadian cast. But CBC burned it off in six parts over two weeks, and North/South promptly disappeared just when the story was getting interesting. It will never return.
The second Canadian-made soap, 49th & Main, was even better. This time, the show was set in Vancouver and revolved around a newly arrived Indian doctor unceremoniously dropped into a multi-cultural community. It was Northern Exposure meets Da Vinci’s Inquest. The last episode of 49th & Main airs on CBC this Thursday, and we’re not likely to see it again.
That surprised me, as I hadn’t seen any news about either show’s cancellation. As luck would have it, I’d been in touch with the William Wallace Grey, the Executive Producer of 49th and Main, and I asked him a few questions about the show, the process of getting a Canadian soap-opera to air, and his experiences with the CBC.
