Flashback: hip-hop history
"I don't think I'll be doing this for the rest of my life, because I intend to be a lawyer"
One of the many memorable segments of the 2023 Juno Awards, aired on CBC on March 13, had to be the joyous celebration of hip-hop's history in Canada. (If you watch closely, you can even see relevant archival video in the background.)
The genre was still novel and usually called rap when CBC's Midday reported on it in early 1990. Venues like Toronto's Concert Hall were regularly packed for live shows and local crews were publicly performing rhymes set to a beat.
"I don't think I'll be doing this for the rest of my life, because I intend to be a lawyer," said a young woman who compared rap to poetry. "I don't think I'd go rapping to the judge ... [but] it's for now and it's a way of teaching my people."
Much ado
Last week, CBC Arts told readers about 299 Queen Street West, a new film that "chronicles the origins and heyday" of the country's erstwhile music station.
Shortly after MuchMusic started broadcasting in 1984, the CBC's Michael McIvor reported it was a "tight, lean business" that would make money within a year. Sports channel TSN, meanwhile, might take five years to be profitable.
"With the new specialty channels, pay TV looks healthier today than it has in a long time," said McIvor. According to the Globe and Mail, TSN earned $118 million for the broadcast year in 2021 and MuchMusic became a TikTok channel.
Fruits of their labour
A new movie called, appropriately enough, BlackBerry, "outlines the rise and fall of the BlackBerry," according to CBC News. The film's trailer opens with a pitch asking the listener to "picture a cellphone and an email machine all in one thing."
No date in the trailer is given for said pitch, but the company that made the BlackBerry, Research in Motion of Waterloo, Ont., was working on such a device when CBC's Venture introduced it in 1993 in a story on communications tech.
"Right now you'll find that personal communicators are mostly dreamware — a promise of what's to come," said reporter Deborah Lamb. "Soon, all of these products could merge together, reshaping whole industries."
Fantastic journeys
There must be a storage unit somewhere filled with scrapped plans for public transit in Toronto. As CBC News recently reported, SmartTrack, a former mayor's 2014 pledge on the issue, could be joining the heap.
Holy holidays
Three of the world's major religions observe holidays at the same time in 2023. Easter and Passover will happen during the holy month of Ramadan — an alignment that, CBC found, filled mosques on Good Friday in 1991
When in Ottawa...
Skating on the Rideau Canal, as Hillary Clinton did on a visit to Ottawa in 1995, wasn't in the cards for Jill Biden last week. But she and fellow political wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau still honoured a Canadian winter tradition: they visited a curling club.
Malls and rats
Episode 1 of the new season of the CBC podcast The Secret Life of Canada concerns dead malls. (Come on, we know you had a favourite mall.) This season the podcast will also explore why Newfoundland took ages to join Canada and why Alberta is anti-rat.
