Reflections of a former theatre critic

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Herald theatre critic Brian Brennan, TV critic Bill Musselwhite and arts columnist Patrick Tivy were advertised on Calgary billboards and buses during the 1980s

I was appointed chief theatre critic of the Calgary Herald in 1975, when I was 31. I did the job for 13 years and then moved on to other journalistic endeavours. At that point, I knew it was time to try something different. The landscape of arts coverage had changed and so had I. During the 1970s, a flowering of the arts in Canada had brought with it a flowering of arts journalism in Canadian newspapers. By 1988, the primary newspaper focus was on “fun reads.” Instead of exploring and chronicling, arts writers were encouraged to dispense the light, the bright and the trite. One of the Herald’s regular front-page features was a throwaway piece of fluff called the “Daily Dazzler.” Style trumped content at almost every turn.

The theatre beat had been a great gig while it lasted. The Herald portrayed Calgary as a sophisticated modern city with all the cultural trappings. To reinforce this image, the paper had a theatre critic whose job included travelling to such centres of theatrical activity as Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg,  Stratford, New York and London to write about shows that might one day be produced in Calgary. When you consider the size of the Calgary market in 1975 – with only three professional theatres: Theatre Calgary, ATP and Lunchbox – this was pretty amazing. My travel budget was the envy of critics across the country. Aside from documenting the achievements on the local stage, I got to go to these other places and report back. What did I see? Was there anything valuable, useful or important on offer? The local theatres included many of my top picks in their longlists for the upcoming seasons.

There was no Hollywood gossip in the paper back then. Coverage of the pop music scene was minuscule. When Elvis died in 1977, it was front-page news across the country except in Calgary. However, Rick McNair’s appointment as Theatre Calgary’s artistic director did make the front page. The Herald thought of itself as a newspaper for adults, not a comic paper for teenyboppers. Never mind the fact that fewer people were going to the theatre than were cramming into the Corral for the rock concerts. Theatre, opera and symphony concerts reigned supreme in the Herald’s live entertainment coverage.

Another difference between then and now was that the Herald saw itself as a leader not as a panderer. The newspaper bosses didn’t conduct customer surveys or assemble focus groups to find out what readers wanted to see in the paper. They didn’t take their cues from the other media. The editors and the writers gave the readers what they considered important. They did so in much the same way that some literary juries today give prizes to books they think people ought to read. Patronizing? Perhaps. But to paraphrase a later quote from Steve Jobs, we didn’t think readers would know what they wanted until we gave it to them.

Things started to change in the mid-1980s when the Herald allowed itself to become a second-rate player of television’s game. It stopped leading and began copying. Instead of continuing to do what it did best, providing thoughtful, analytical, detailed coverage of the arts, the paper turned into the print equivalent of Entertainment Tonight. The columns became shorter and the graphics became larger. The Herald could never compete with the excitement, the urgency or the energy of television, but it tried. And failed.

There were still some very good things about the arts and entertainment section of the paper. Its coverage of books and the visual arts were still second to none in Canada, though largely confined to one day a week. So too, despite truncated travel budgets and constricted space, were its coverage of theatre, dance and popular music. But classical music coverage virtually disappeared from the paper and opera coverage became essentially promotional. In their stead came celebrity tittle-tattle and an emphasis on pop culture.

Could it be that I had become old guard and failed to move with the times? Perhaps. But as I said in a 1988 article for the Canadian Theatre Review, if moving with the times meant becoming light, bright and trite, then I would remain rooted resolutely in the past. I preferred to think of moving with the times as being aware of what Peter Brook, Peter Sellars and Philip Glass were doing, not developing the kind of glibness that it takes to be booked as a guest on the Letterman Show.

You can read more about that vibrant period in Canadian theatre history as I viewed it from 1975 onwards in my newly published book of memoirs, Leaving Dublin: Writing my Way from Ireland to Canada. If you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, you can download a free sample from the book via iTunes.

David Climenhaga’s “Leaving Dublin” review

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David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga, my friend, fellow blogger, and former colleague at the Calgary Herald, has written a generous review of “Leaving Dublin,” posted both to his politically influential, widely-read Alberta Diary blog and to the equally well-read rabble.ca website.

The focus of the review, as one might expect from a trade unionist who walked a picket line with me for eight months, is on the chapter dealing with the now almost-forgotten Calgary Herald strike of 1999-2000. And, given that we were comrades-in-arms, you might expect him to agree with everything I have to say about that fractious labour dispute, its origins and its aftermath.

Not necessarily so. We witnessed a recent situation where Edward Greenspan, a prominent Toronto criminal lawyer who represented Conrad Black during his 2007 fraud trial in Chicago, was moved to write a lengthy rebuttal in The Globe and Mail taking issue with what he calls Black’s “flawed” account of the trial in his recently published memoirs. Greenspan says that Black’s fanciful recounting of the legal proceedings serves as a reminder of “how seldom an accused person actually grasps what is going on in court. Most defendants in a criminal trial realize that they shouldn’t expect to understand the process. That is what hiring experienced criminal counsel is all about.”

I could have been similarly guilty of not grasping what went on when the owners of the Calgary Herald (one of whom happened to be Conrad Black) forced us to take strike action in support of our quest to obtain a first collective agreement for the Herald newsroom. If David had written the same chapter – and at one point we actually did discuss the possibility of collaborating on a book about the strike – I suspect he would have been considerably less restrained than I was in describing some of the principal players and their actions.

But I am glad to see from David’s review that we are both on the same page in terms of how we recall this pivotal event in our lives. The book we hoped to write never materialized because the publisher we approached did not want to risk being sued. But I am happy that another publisher, the estimable RMB | Rocky Mountain Books, considered the story important enough to warrant at least a chapter in my book of memoirs.

“Galway Bay”

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Here’s a taste of what you missed if you didn’t make it to one of my musical book launches for “Leaving Dublin” earlier this month. I’m telling the audience about a concert tour of Canada that Shay Duffin and I did with Dublin’s Abbey Tavern Singers in the fall of 1967:

Solidarity forever

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Singing "Solidarity Forever" on the Calgary Herald picket line, November 1999, with yours truly on accordion.

I have held memberships in several unions over the course of my working life – writers’ unions, musicians’ unions, broadcasters’ unions – yet I never considered myself a trade unionist until I joined forces with my journalistic colleagues to bring a union into the hitherto non-unionized newsroom of the Calgary Herald.

That organizing initiative began 13 years ago and – though it ultimately ended in defeat – I look back upon it now as one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career. I had worked at the Herald for 24 years as a staff writer, and the union drive gave me a sense of empowerment I had never felt before as an employee. I cover the story in some detail in a chapter of my memoirs, Leaving Dublin: Writing My Way from Ireland to Canada, just published by the estimable RMB | Rocky Mountain Books. The labour action I describe was kindled in a cauldron of repressed anger and frustration, gleamed for an instant as a flame of hope and shared purpose, and finally was extinguished for reasons beyond the control of those of us who dearly wanted to keep it burning.

It happened during a time, in the late 1990s, when daily newspapers were no longer what they had been for 100 years: a guaranteed source of profit, a licence to print money as we used to say. Now they were printing in red ink, losing advertisers to television, and losing readers – especially younger readers – to the blandishments of the newly arrived World Wide Web.

The Herald came through these industry perils relatively unscathed. Because it is located in one of the more affluent cities in Canada, the newspaper continued to generate profits of between $30 and $40 million annually while its sister papers in the Southam (now, Postmedia) chain were posting total annual losses of more than $150 million. However, the Southam bosses could not sit idly by while several of their holdings suffered financially. So they siphoned profits from the Herald and ordered the paper to cut costs.

It was not long before we felt the direct impact of these cuts in the Herald newsroom. First we had a round of voluntary layoffs. Then we were told that expense accounts and travel budgets were being shaved. Finally – after more layoffs and some changes in corporate ownership and senior Herald management – we were told that our primary purpose was no longer to produce award-winning journalism, but to keep advertisers, government leaders and corporate clients happy. We were now to view ourselves as “content providers.” Before, we had thought of ourselves as the newspaper equivalent of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. Now, we were playing in a kazoo band. When we tried to express our concerns to management, we were told they had no interest in listening to us as a group. Dignity went out the window, along with respect. That was the point at which we asked the union – the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP) of Canada – for help.

The CEP reps warned us that a first contract would not be easy to obtain. It would take at least 18 months of tough bargaining, and we would have to fight hard for every clause that was not about management rights. But at the end of the day we would have what most major newsrooms in Canada already had: an equitable agreement with a legally mandated grievance procedure and guaranteed rights and protections for the employees.

We never achieved our goal. Weak provincial labour laws – no compulsory first-contract arbitration, no anti-scab legislation – and an unyielding employer combined to keep us from getting a first collective agreement. After an eight-month lockout and strike, our union local was dissolved and most of the 93 journalists who had walked the picket line for the duration opted not to return to work.

Some people had told us we were crazy to take strike action against the company. “You are jumping off a cliff,” they said. But we felt it was the only tool we had left to bring the company to the table to deal with our grievances. There are some battles that you fight, not because you think you can win, but because you know it is the right thing to do. The defenders of the Alamo – who as legend holds opted to stay and fight – could have gotten on their horses and ridden away. We could have done likewise but chose not to. This was our hill to die on.

Though the outcome was dispiriting, the experience for me was gratifying. Through it all, I gained a deeper appreciation for the collective efforts that had led to previous generations of unionized employees obtaining benefits that we now take for granted: an eight-hour day, five-day week, minimum wages, workplace health and safety regulations, unemployment insurance, paid vacations and company pension plans.

The Herald has moved on and so have I. But nobody has told this story before and it is an insider story that demands to be told. That is why I have included it in my memoirs. Maybe it will provide food for thought for – among others – those construction industry leaders who are currently asking the Alberta government to make the province’s already weak labour laws even weaker.

Leaving Dublin is available from Amazon.ca and wherever else fine books are sold.

This post also appears on StraightGoods.ca

CBC Radio’s Daybreak Alberta

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CBC Radio’s Russell Bowers did a great interview about “Leaving Dublin,” Sat. Sept. 10 on his program, “Daybreak Alberta,” broadcast across the province.

Click on the arrow and enjoy: