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Recasting history : how CBC Television has shaped Canada's past

2019

Format:	Book
Author:	MacDonald, Monica, 1965- author
Title:	Recasting history : how CBC Television has shaped Canada's past / Monica MacDonald.
Publisher, Date:	Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019.
Description:	xxii, 263 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Summary:	"This book explores Canadian history documentary and docudrama programming on CBC television since its beginnings in 1952. During this fifty-year period, television was a uniquely powerful medium --at once intimate and widely shared, reaching millions of people. CBC was the only Canadian broadcaster to consistently show history programming and has played a unique role in shaping Canadians' perceptions of their history. Analyzing the major works of Canadian history on CBC television over fifty years -- Explorations (1956-63), Images of Canada (1972-76), The National Dream (1974), The Valour and the Horror (1992), and Canada: A People's History (2000-02) -- reveals patterns and developments in content and presentation. This book is both a critique of public history and a political economy of television production."-- Provided by publisher.
Subjects:	Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. English Television Network -- Influence Television -- Social aspects -- Canada History on television Television and history -- Canada Television broadcasting policy -- Canada -- History Historical television programs -- Canada -- History and criticism Documentary television programs -- Canada -- History and criticism
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued also in electronic formats.
ISBN:	9780773556317 (hardcover) 9780773556324 (softcover)
Other Number:	1045738675
System Availability:	2
Current Holds:	0
# Local items:	2
Control Number:	1748839
Call Number:	302.23/450971
Course Reserves:	0
# Local items in:	1
# System items in:	1

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Summary

Since 1952, CBC television has played a unique role as the primary mass media purveyor of Canadian history. Yet until now, there have been no comprehensive accounts of Canadian history on television. Monica MacDonald takes us behind the scenes of the major documentaries and docudramas broadcast on the CBC, including in Explorations (1956-64) and the series Images of Canada (1972-76), The National Dream (1974), The Valour and the Horror (1992), and Canada: A People's History (2000-02). Drawing on a wide range of sources, MacDonald explores how producers struggled to represent the Canadian past under a range of external and internal pressures. Despite dramatic shifts in the writing of history over this period, she determines that television themes and interpretations largely remained the same. The greater change was in the production and presentation, particularly in the role of professional historians, as journalists emerged not only as the new producers of Canadian history on CBC television, but also as the new content authorities. A critique of public history through the lens of political economy, Recasting History reveals the conflicts, compromises, and controversies that have shaped the CBC version of the Canadian past.

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