Farmers and cowboys used to say that the scariest words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." That phrase has been echoed by occupations of all sorts recently as governments extend their influence deeper into our lives. This morning, for example, the Canadian Federal Department of Health announced a 27 step program to reduce our consumption of salt. Included are new regulations for restaurant...

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I first met Maury Chaykin a few days after he'd emigrated from New York to Toronto. We'd both been cast in a new play called "Hooray for Johnny Canuck" written by Ken Gass for the Factory Theatre. The theatre, like most in Toronto in the 1970's, was in a dirty old warehouse. The play was an attempt to revive the once hugely popular, but by then completely forgotten Canadian comic book industry which had thrived through the...

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When you bounce around the world as much as I seem to do, you begin to notice things about local newscasts that probably escape the locals. Like what's the deal with Sportscasters and hair gel? The minute the lights come up on the local panel of News Anchors, you can always tell which guy is going to do the sports report because, whether he's 16 or 60, he's gellin'. I guess hair gel is supposed to imply you're young and...

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The dog and I had been driving for hours, flanked by endless walls of trees and we both needed to pee real bad. Our road finally wound out of the woods and into a town so small it didn’t even seem to have a name. The street was deserted, far from unusual in any small town on a Sunday night, and the only place that looked open called itself “The Burger Scoop”. I pulled into the parking lot figuring they might have coffee...

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Sad news for those hyping a "Canadian Invasion" of locally produced series into the US market. As of late Wednesday, writers and stars of the CTV series "The Bridge" were informing their fans of a notice from CBS that future American broadcasts of the show had been cancelled. The cancellation comes after the 2 hour pilot and 2nd episode both played to dismally small audiences in a Summer Saturday night slot traditionally reserved...

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Two years back, in posting updates from the NATPE Convention, I estimated that Canadian television networks only had a couple of years to change their ways or they'd be swamped by upstart technologies. It appears that prediction is closer than ever to coming true. To be honest, I've sensed something unusual was in the wind since the CRTC delivered its broadcaster friendly semi-decision on saving Local TV back in April and...

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"O pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth, that I am meek and gentle with these thy butchers…" Julius Caesar Act III  Scene 1. When I was ten or eleven, I decided I was going to be an Oceanologist. It was one of those passing romantic fantasies kids have. Heck, I was living in Saskatchewan, didn't know how to swim yet and hadn't even visited a body of water where you couldn't see the opposite shore. But I'd watched...

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Every writer knows the primacy of Place in telling a story. Defining where a story happens both taps into your audience's knowledge or interest in the locale as well as helping to make them comfortable in a world that could be far removed from what's familiar to them. When the process is done well, you reap great rewards in story potential, character dimension and unique plot twists that couldn't happen anywhere else. ...

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Did we finish saving local TV last year or is everybody just gearing up to make us give up something more to save it all over again? I'm just asking, because the whole "our broadcast system is in trouble" thing seemed to go quiet after the CRTC offered its decision (okay, technically only a proposal for a decision) last April in which it said Cable companies had to give broadcasters more money -- uh, if the courts said it...

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I'm not a huge fan of the sport that's Soccer to us North Americans and Football to the rest of the world. Coming off the Stanley Cup playoffs and right into the World Cup felt like segueing from Yosemite Sam to Pepe LePew. Chaos to finesse. Raw Machismo to sophisticated charm. And while the tendency among those broadcasting the game here is to play up the competing ethnicities like you're on some tour of the funny foods aisle...

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Once again the Legion hosts a guest blogger. Today we welcome Will Pascoe. Will's one of those all around, well-rounded writer filmmaker whattayagot kinda guys. He's written a great book about Baseball. Directed award winning documentaries, including a festival fave about Noam Chomsky and was recently nominated for the WGC's Jim Burt Screenwriting prize. I'm hoping to entice him back later this summer to describe sharing tacos...

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I had breakfast on a Banff patio the last Wednesday of June, a mere two weeks after the mountain town had been Ground Zero to the biggest upheaval in Canadian Arts in recent memory. As the guys at the next table snickered over how bad the Calgary Stampeders were going to kick Toronto Argonaut butt the next day, my eyes swept the street. But I guess the heavy Spring rains had washed away all the...

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