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Starowicz’s
Vision through Trials, Tribulations and Turbulent Waters
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Mark Starowicz was the Executive Producer of the CBC’s documentary series, Canada: A People’s History. This history
series went onto become one of the largest rating
grabbers in Canadian television history.
One would expect that the series would be pretty easy to put together
considering it had the manpower of CBC television studios in Toronto and
Radio-Canada in Montreal as well as sponsorship from both Sun Life Financial
and Bell Canada. However, this could not
be further from the truth. In Starowicz’s book, Making
History: The Remarkable Story Behind Canada: A People’s History, he gives
first hand details about the trials and tribulations that he and his production
were forced to endure in order to attain the Starowicz’s
vision of a televised Canadian History series.
Everything from sinking ships, budgeting issues, staff cutbacks death
and illness and plain frustration over the bureaucratic inner workings of the
CBC would nearly sink the series. But
alas, as we all know, the series did eventually make it to air and would become
quite successful.
The very beginning of the series saw a
camera crew, a production team, Mark Starowicz and his daughter set off on a
vessel in search of the replica of The
Matthew along the northern shores of Newfoundland. The Matthew was on its way to pick up
the Premier of Newfoundland at the time, Brian Tobin, and his accompaniment of
ministers and other political dignitaries for a sail in and gala landing. However, the Premier was never picked up by the Matthew. Why did this happen? The CBC boat, after finishing nearly sank
while trying to return to port. It was
a local trawler responding to their maydays that saved them. But the Coast Guard ship, following
protocol, cut the Matthew and began
the search for the CBC boat. So the
Matthew, once the Coast Guard ship returned, had to make up time miss the
picking up Tobin and his entourage. The
media caught wind of this and had questions, but Starowicz had returned to port
and left town before the media could contact him for comment.
Hillarious stories like this one
occur throughout the book. Starowicz,
for good measure, also mixes in some tragedy in order to make the story
dramatic and exciting. The tragedy is
perhaps best characterized at the end of chapter 13 and the beginning of
chapter 14 when Starowicz is still amongst another round of turmoil at the CBC,
his wife wants a divorce. The Prime
Minister, following the resignation of CBC President Perrin Beatty, refused to
appoint a new President for a long period before finally appointing Robert Rabinovitch. This
delay left the CBC virtually rudderless since nobody new which way the CBC
would be director towards on a corporate level. To make matters worse, one of Starowicz’s key allies in working the system of the CBC,
Bob Culbert, lost his job as executive director of
news and current affairs because Harold Redekopp, the
head of CBC English Television, wanted big changes in CBC Newsworld
(Starowicz 233).
Add to this the discovery that Governor General Romeo LeBlanc decided to
retire from his position due to the discovery that his Right Honourableness had diabetes. LeBlanc departure was a big loss because he
was seen as a keen ally in trying to gain corporate funding for the history
series. Add to this several illnesses
and eventual deaths of key production management people throughout the series
production tapings, it would seem the series might have been cursed from day
one. At times Mark’s world was falling
around him, yet he continued on. It is
truly amazing Mark didn’t fall into a sense of depression and totally give up
on the series itself.
From
the tragedies grew new opportunities as Mark used his contacts in order to get
the production process back up an running.
An example of this would be the pulling out of an initial funding deal
at the beginning of the book. Starowicz
was severely upset when the National Film
Board pulled out of funding the series.
However, Starowicz worked his contacts and, somehow, the CBC ended up
convinced, despite being cash strapped (Kelley, internet). The series was born and a bright future of
filming lay ahead. But once things got
going and seemed the sky was the limit, another tragedy happened that would
hamper production of the series.
Whether it was a CBC television technician strike or wondering what kind
of sponsorship deal would be in the works, the series always had a problem to
contend with in order to eventually to go onto become a total success.
The
success of both the assembled production and directing team would be short
lived once the series finished airing.
Due to continued fiscal and political directional problems at both
Radio-Canada and the CBC, a lot of the assembled directors, producers, camera
crew, historical researchers and historical artifacts went their separate
ways. A rich treasure trove of Canadian
historical production value had been lost.
This treasure trove of production could have helped solve historian J.L.
Granatstein’s question of “Who killed Canadian
History? by helping to re-invigorate the Canadian public in the interest of
history via good CBC produced documentaries. However, the CBC and Radio-Canada
let this possibility slip away, which would be the final tragedy in at end of
the series the public never heard about until Starowicz’s
book was released in 2003.
Mark
Starowicz provides both first hand accounts from both his view and the people
involved in the production of Canada: A
People’s History in order to provide the reader a candid look at how the
troubled series came to be. Mark
Starowicz had a vision on what he wanted this series to look like from the very
beginning. Starowicz steered towards
this vision through the turbulent waters made by the CBC’s
reluctance both fiscally, politically and linguistic problems as well as the
calm waters while successfully filming reenactments of battles like the
Bibliography
“Canada: A People’s History.”
CBC. Online. Internet.
Kelley, Geoffrey. “The
Making of A People’s History –
Nothing short of Miraculous.” Institute for Research on Public Policy. June
2003. Online. Internet.
Starowicz, Mark. Making History: The Remarkable Story Behind