Being born and raised in the United States (like I was) doesn’t necessarily make anyone American except on a birth certificate – what’s far more important culturally is what you watch on TV every morning. You’ve got to figure that for three hours or so every day a Canadian kid is getting a completely different set of life experiences than their counterparts in the States.
I actually don’t know what other Americans watched on weekday mornings – I guess Captain Kangaroo was common to both cultures, but after that things were quite different. Canadian kids’ morning shows were very quiet and gentle (the after-school shows were another story, and I’ll talk about them another time). Lots of conversation, storytelling, music and lo-tech puppets. At least one show (“Chez Helene”) was bilingual, with the puppet doing all of the English heavy lifting while human Helene spoke French. Based on body language alone I don’t think they ever argued despite the language barrier, although it would be pretty hard for me to tell if they were.
Of all the shows on Canadian television the one with the most profound influence on me, and presumably all of Canada was “The Friendly Giant”. On a typical show you’d come to his castle, where he’d have a few little chairs by a fireplace for you to virtually sit in. Some days we’d get a concert from musician cat puppets, but usually he’d be joined by Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe and he would read them (and us) a story. There’d be a short discussion about what the story meant in the grand scheme of things, and then The Friendly Giant would say goodbye to us all. At the end of every show he would take out a recorder and play the melody to “Early One Morning”, an old English folk song about longing and unrequited love. I never heard the words until years later, but the sadness of the song was unmistakable and runs through my head whenever there is an emotional goobye in my life.
“Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,
I heard a maiden singing in the valley below.
Oh, don’t deceive me, Oh never leave me.
How can you use a poor maiden so ?”
There is simply no way that the thousands (millions?) of children that heard that song every day could NOT be different from the ones who didn’t. The show and the music influenced what I think, the melodies I write, the emotions I feel when listening to a certain type of song and the way I treat other people. I’m quite sure that even though “The Friendly Giant” is long gone, the influence of this show is still being passed on from generation to generation north of the border, and you should keep all of this in mind the next time you meet a Canadian – they’ve got a different set of wiring inside.
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