Obituary for Jennette Lovie Levett

 

Jennette passed away in the wee hours of the morning on January 9, 2018 at Elisabeth Bruyere Hospital in Ottawa. following a short but devastating struggle with oral cancer She faced her cancer with stoicism and dignity, and was more concerned about her caregivers and friends than herself.

She was the loving wife of the late Roger William Levett and the devoted daughter of the late James Joseph Lovie and his wife Chrystal. She leaves her brother, Jim Lovie (Deborah), nephew Ryan and niece Lauryn as well as her legion of friends and admirers. She will be missed by Rose Simpson, Scott Troyer and family. She also leaves behind her mother-in-law Terry and family in British Columbia.

Jennette was a proud public servant who took great pride in her work family, and kept in touch after she retired.  She spent most of her career at Transport Canada and the Canadian Security Establishment where she worked in Ottawa and in Washington.

She was also a long time member of the National Press Club of Canada.

Funeral services will be held at Kelly’s Funeral Home, 1255 Walkley Road, in Ottawa on Saturday, February 3, 2018. Further details will be available soon at www.arbourmemorial.ca. There will also be a wake on Friday, January 12^th at Patty’s Pub, 1186 Bank Street, at 6 p.m. Please email Rose Simpson at Rosalita54@gmail.com if you plan to attend.

Jennette would like to thank the incredible staff at the Hunt Club Manor, the wonderful nurses from the CCAC, and the many doctors and nurses who cared for her over her illness. In particular, she wanted to thank her family doctor, Dr. Catherine Montpetit as well as Dr. Stephanie Johnson-Obaseki, Dr. Libni Eapen, and the staff at the Ottawa Cancer Centre.

A lifelong animal lover, Jennette would ask, in lieu of flowers, that donations be made to Under My Wing Pug Rescue (www.undermywingpugrescue.com), the Ottawa Humane Society or the charity of your choice.

 

 

Bell Media and the senseless slaughter of local news

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming, The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

As the voters in the last election demonstrated, hell hath no fury like a Canadian scorned.

That is why the Big Giant Heads at Bell Media are getting a snootful of anger over the firing of popular radio and television hosts across Canada.

And so they should, the rat bastards.

In our neighborhood, what was once called the Ottawa Valley, viewers unleashed a can of whoopass over the Internet yesterday over the firing of Carol Anne Meehan, the long-time anchor of CTV Ottawa’s supper hour program.

Carol Anne has been at the station once called CJOH-TV for 27 years. She’s a survivor who managed to keep going through the shooting death of sportscaster Brian Smith and the tragic death of her own husband Greg Etue. She survived through the terrible deaths of Bill Paterson, Leigh Chapple and CTV stalwart and community booster Max Keeping.

She’s even survived Graham Richardson, a two-toned sidekick with less personality than Harry Reasoner, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday, Carol Anne and Carolyn Waldo, the Canadian Gold Medalist who subbed-in for sports, were both given three days to decide whether they would stick around. They were given the option of taking lesser jobs presumably ladling soup in the cafeteria.

Both opted out of the Bell bundle.

Carol Anne told the Ottawa Sun yesterday that she could barely speak when told the news. She was too upset to even say goodbye to colleagues. She went to her office, picked up the photos of her children and left the building, after being treated about as well as Charlie Sheen would be by an ex-lover.

The scuppering of long time talent is nothing more than nickels and dimes for Bell Media, a company that conducts itself like pre-ghost Scrooge at Christmas time. It is a heartless beast, the kind of company that makes us all ashamed to be Canadian, one that scoops up little companies, and tears them apart as a Great White Shark would do a swimmer.

To be fair, Bell Media warned us all that perfectly coiffed heads would roll if the CRTC didn’t let it pick our pockets just a little more to make us pay for local programming,  The company has made good on that promise over the past couple of years by eliminating key jobs at radio and television stations.

But we weren’t prepared for yesterday.

It’s as if Bell Media wanted to show how completely bereft of humanity it could be. If this were the Hunger Games, Carol Anne was our Katniss Everdeen.

Bell would say, what’s up with that? Canadians lose their jobs all the time at companies that are highly profitable. Banks get rid of tellers, manufacturers get rid of widget makers and high tech gets rid of what they consider expendable talent. And we are sad for these folks because they may be our relatives or favorite customer service people.

But the media is different.

They get us through tragedies, and help us make sense of the world around us.

When people like Carol Anne are sent to slaughter, it’s personal for us.

Radio personalities like Rick Gibbons and Steve Madely (did he jump or was he pushed after 51 years?) at CFRA get us through our lunch hours, and help us get up in the morning. We welcome them into our homes and cars and offices. They become friends to shut-ins and the elderly.

Every night for two and a half decades, we ate supper with Carol Anne Meehan. We met her at countless fundraisers where she always had a warm smile and something nice to say.

We walked along with her on her difficult journey after she endured tragedy in the newsroom and within her own family. We marvelled how she could have such a busy job and raise two fine youngsters. She never complained, she was always there in the chair.

Bell Media took those people away from us yesterday, and put them down like sad cows at an abattoir.

It was a senseless slaughter, and people are angry and some will rise up and change the channel.

But that’s not the solution. Bell Media wants us to drift away from local news.

Why? Because local programming may be right and good, but it doesn’t make them any money.

They want us to watch HBO and Crave.

It’s called Pay television for a reason.

If we want to hit Bell hard, we need to be strategic.

We need to punch them right in the digital box and Smart Phone where they live.

We need to say goodbye to Bell Fibe and to Bell phone services and say yes to smaller independent providers. We need to urge the CRTC to open up the market.

In the end, it probably won’t matter much.

Thanks to its monopoly, Bell will still make money.

And Carol Anne and Carolyn will still be out of jobs.

All we can do is wish them well.

And tell Bell Media to stuff its HDMI cables where the sun don’t shine.

Margaret Trudeau: Canada’s Steel Maple

 

 Photo courtesy of Institut Douglas

Behind every great leader, there is a strong mother.

If you look at Canadian Prime Ministers, you will see that many of them were men raised by strong mothers. Pierre Trudeau had Grace. John Turner had Phyllis. And Mackenzie King famously had Isabella Grace.

And Justin has Margaret.

There are still many of my generation who chuckle at the mention of Margaret’s name because of her famous antics in the 70s. There were books, photographs. Just imagine what would have happened to the Trudeau family if the Internet was around.

Fortunately for Margaret, the Canadian media was, and is, quite respectful of families. Even Rob Ford’s family has not been hounded into the ground for his trespasses. But there is no question if Margaret had been Canada’s first lady in the age of social media, the family would have been destroyed.

It’s been years since Studio 54 but the international media has its sights set on Margaret as they did on Prince Diana. That scumbag Geraldo Rivera was quick to remind folks about a liaison back in the day, which he wrote about salaciously in a tell all book. And there will be other stories and photographs ripped from the archives by TMZ.

You can count on it.

But Margaret, bless her, is taking it all in stride and with a sense of humor.

She talked to Bob Fife about her days at 24 Sussex describing the place as “the Crown Jewel of Canada’s Penitentiary System.”

And she mused about the Trudeaus not moving into the creaky, leaky pile at 24, saying it was such a wreck, the family was going to seek other accommodations. There was a bit of bluster about that in the PMO, but it turned out to be true.

It was a smart media move. Margaret floated the trial balloon, and Justin made it happen thus preventing his family from living in a place that has worse plumbing than the Ottawa Mission.

It’s hard to imagine even Prince Diana, had she lived, putting herself out there for interviews with a media that was set on destroying her in her youth.

But Margaret has never been afraid of the media. In fact, she welcomes its gaze.

Why shouldn’t she? She has nothing to hide. It’s all out there, the dirty laundry. Like her son, she has been a public figure for much of her life. She even survived having her life examined in a famous Canadian theatre production, Maggie and Pierre. If the late Linda Griffiths were still around, I’m sure she’d be mounting a revival right now.

Margaret is admired because her life is highly relatable for many women who have struggled with mental illness. And she’s a role model for those who continue to struggle with bipolar disorder, anxiety and substance abuse.

Margaret has faced her demons and has vanquished them. She is now a spokesperson for the cause, writing books and giving speeches. And what’s left of her time is given to her grandchildren and good works particularly in Third World countries.

She also survived the unthinkable: the tragic death of her son Michel, whose body lies somewhere in the bottom of a glacial lake. I can’t even imagine how a person survives something like that, and remains standing.

Margaret does. Under the sweet exterior, behind the lovely twinkling eyes, lies a Steel Maple.

She is awesome and we should be proud to know her and cherish her as our First Mom.

Unicorns and rainbows

I wrote a piece today, a nostalgia piece about the time I spent in Pierre Trudeau’s PMO and the positive thoughts I had about the experience. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that I got some pushback from an angry reader who accused me of being full of “rainbows and unicorns”.

I was about to go to bed when I got one of those God thoughts I get once in a while. If you are a person of faith, you sometimes get them, those nagging thoughts that don’t go away. So it’s past my bedtime, and if I don’t get this off my chest, I won’t be able to sleep.

So.

I am a Liberal because I was raised by a mother whose husband died after he came home from the war. He had PTSD and killed himself in a car crash leaving her and her children with nothing. We lived beside my grandparents in a house with no indoor plumbing until I was a teenager. My mother had to rely on mother’s allowance to get her through. When I was 16, after my grandparents died, my mother went to work in a back breaking job in a sweater factory where sometimes the heat was over 40 degrees. She was 50 and it was terrible work. She did that job until she could barely walk and had to rely on disability payments. My mom died when she was 67 years old, a broken woman. She spent her last year in Toronto Hospital with a wasting disease that left her so small I had to buy her new clothes that fit her for her funeral.

My brothers and I were fortunate to live in a country that believed that families that were less fortunate should be given a “leg up”.  It was called a social safety net. Thanks to progressive government including the one overseen by Conservative Premier Bill Davis, and the federal party under Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau,  all of our family were able to go to university. Both of my brothers have been very successful and it was because of the loans and grants we all received that we were able to dream the dreams that children in other countries rarely get to experience.

My story is not quite as good. I went to university, landed myself some pretty good jobs but fell into the perennial trap that women do. I fell in love with the wrong man, and he left me with three children under six. I realized soon afterwards that with all my skills and training, I was no better off than my mother. He went on to make millions while my children had to live in a rented townhouse with snow drifts coming in the windows.

Life has been hard for me, living a lower class life working part-time for the past two decades to support my children.

In the process, I have lost nearly everything: my career, my dignity, my future.

It’s too late for me. I know well the life of a pension-less woman. I saw my mother go through it, watched her kill cockroaches in her high rise apartment and clean bird shit off her balcony. I am better off. I can still make a white collar living, and that is thanks to a government which gave me an education –at the very least.

The last ten years have been hard and all I have is hope.

What I hope is that I can count on a better life for my children and grandchildren, the kind of future that was promised to me so long ago. I want for my grandchildren a promise of a clean environment, with water as clear as crystal, and a climate that is friendly and unthreatening. I want for them a world where they can share our boundless resources with others especially immigrants who have much to offer this country but who have had the misfortune to be born in hell on Earth.

For me, I only ask one thing: that my life is full of kindness, and warmth and caring for my fellow travelers.

That’s what I hope to see.

Maybe I’m all full of rainbows and unicorns.

But remember. At the end of every rainbow is a pot of gold, and on the face of every unicorn is a horn that’s meant to protect the pot of gold — our children.

A Trip Down Trudeau Lane

Like many of the desiccated old corpses who were here in Ottawa during the Pierre Trudeau days, I’ve been combing through my old files reminiscing about all the fun we used to have. Justin has brought this out in many of us who worked on the Hill in the 60s, 70s and 80s. We just can’t help ourselves.

Ah, it takes me back. Like the time, as a young reporter, Pierre chased me off his property when I was sent to interview him as he was moving boxes out of 24 Sussex the first time. Or the time, after the Press Gallery dinner show, when he came back stage and told me I had real talent.

I might have been wearing this.

 

Then there was the time I had dinner with him and a bunch of politicos at Dubruvik’s in Winnipeg. I got stuck right beside him.

“So Prime Minister, I understand the Liberal caucus bought you a VCR for Christmas. What are you watching?”

He shrugged.

“Whatever tapes Tom (Axworthy) sends over for me to watch.”

“Have you seen Superman?”

“Are you asking me how I got my date with Margot Kidder?”

“What do you think of Joe Clark?”

“He’s a small mean man.”

That kind of thing. Let’s just say Pierre and I were never what you would call sympatico.

But I did have the privilege of working in his PMO in the final two years before he took his walk in the snow. And I did get to meet his young sons, including Justin. We were at a barbecue held by Pierre’s chauffer at the Gatehouse right in front of the big house, the one Margaret described today as the Crown Jewel of the Canadian Penetentiary System, 24 Sussex Drive.

We were getting high, giggling and waving at the Mounties and tourists after a fun game of baseball. At one point Justin and his bros zoomed over on their bikes. Sasha had a video camera and started taping us as we tried to hide the reefers. We may be responsible for the journalism career he has today!

Being in the PMO was a blast. I was one of the women who worked for Bill MacEachern. He called us his Angels.

He couldn’t have gotten away with that today, but we loved him for it. On Hallowe’en we came dressed up in wings and stilettos.

Those were really, really fun times in politics. There was none of the nastiness that has permeated the system like the mould in the West Block.

Keith Davey described it as “the politics of joy.”

I hope we get that back in this country. I hope Justin and Sophie lead the yoga classes on Parliament Hill. I hope Ralph Goodale gets an earring.

Maybe he will after pot is finally made legal. Unless Rona Ambrose and Stephen Harper are right and we all die of brain cancer.

Even more fun. Then we’ll be Zombies and eat tourist brains for lunch.

You see what Liberals bring to the table.

It’s called imagination. Learn about it.

 

Hello world, it’s Canada. We’re back!

I awoke this morning from the most glorious dream.
It was 1967 all over again. Or maybe the Vancouver Olympics.
All was right with the world.
The Jays were making a spectacular comeback.
It was a beautiful day in the Nation’s capital.
And all my faith was restored.
Wait a minute. Wait a solid minute.
What the?
It wasn’t a dream after all?
I am so energized that I feel like buying the world a Coke.
And a deep-fried Mars bar.
I’m not worried about my cholesterol, or my aching knee.
I am just so grateful to be alive living in this glorious country.
People are starting to care again. They are clacking their heels as they walk to the bus stop. And I believe I saw somebody riding a bicycle in shorts.
Welcome to the 2015s, or whatever.
It’s a brand new day, and Canada has a brand new brand.
We actually have a leader who would look good in LuLu Lemon yoga pants. A leader who isn’t at all worried about this prostate. And he has a banging yogini by his side, clutching her heart praying to Buddha or some such.
Aren’t they adorable?
But as we see from the Obama experience, adorable is simply not enough.
The country won’t run itself, and the young Trudeau can’t go off running to Steve to ask his advice.
So get to work, Justin.
Yeah, you heard that right. I called him Justin.
I like calling him Justin.
It makes me feel justified.
Here are your marching orders, young man.
Pick up the phone and call General Hilliard. Tell him to send a mess of boats to Syria and pick up some refugees. Stat!
Put Marc Garneau in charge of Science and the Census.
Put Andrew Leslie in charge of the friggin’ frigates.
Untie all of the bureaucrats that are rotting in the basement over in Tunney’s –they’ve got talking to do.
Hello world! We are back and we are young, smart and able.
We can do anything now that we are free to be you and me.
Let’s blaze one and get on with our future.
I have to admit, I’m pumped.

It’s Election Day: No more commercials!

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Are you pumped about the Election?
I am.
It means that Canadians will be saving millions of dollars because the government will finally stop running those hideous commercials.
I’m not talking about the ones paid for by the political elites.
I’m talking about those taxpayer-funded commercials touting hockey equipment tax credits, home renovation plans, and many things that do not currently exist.
Some people refer to this as selling snake oil.
Or affordable Home B&Bs in Vancouver.
After today, the airwaves will be Stephen, Tom and Justin free for the “long term future,” a term coined by Trudeau to explain how to get a permanent restraining order against a lobbyist.
Ah, my heart is filled, and my ears welcome the steady stream of commercials about Acorn Stairlifts, reversed home mortgages (the Conservative version of Money Mart) and insurance to pay for your funeral before you’re dead. (Dude open a savings account!)
I hate those commercials but not as much as I hate knowing that I’m paying for commercials that are meant to appeal to me.
So rejoice Canadians.
The government will keeping those millions of dollars in a savings account, garnering enough interest to pay down the debt and give us a balanced budget.
Well done!

Decided

After careful consideration, weighing the options, putting aside my personal disdain for politicians in general, I have made my choice.
It’s Justin Trudeau.
What put the Liberals over the top for me was their optimism, and the Trudeau camp decision to take the high road in this dirty, smelly election campaign.
I’m tired of secrets and scandal. I’m weary of “veiled” threats against new Canadians. I’m sick of a government that turns a blind eye to the plight of some refugees while cherry picking others to come to our country.
Stephen Harper has made a laughing stock of this country.
He is the national version of Rob Ford, only he’s making all his decisions sober, and that scares the Turkey dinner stuffing out of me.
Mulcair, the great inquisitor, has failed to inspire.
The last straw was last week when he tried to take credit for all of Jack Layton’s hard work.
So on October 19th, I will vote for David McGuinty, who is a good MP.
And I will offer up my ten cents on the dollar for Justin Trudeau.
But with a caveat.
Don’t screw it up.
I’ve placed my faith in the Liberal Party too many times only to be disappointed by the unearned arrogance and entitlement of its leadership.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…
We’re counting on you Justin Trudeau.
Don’t make us come and get you.
We know where you’ll be living.

Mothers against Stephen Harper

Embed from Getty Images

In Harperland, it’s everybody for themselves

Tough times are Tory times.

It was a saying I hadn’t heard in years but it now has remarkable resonance.

Stephen Harper has been with us since 2006. Back then, I had a good full time job. I lost that job a year later and haven’t had more than a part time gig since. In 2006, I was working in the same field I work in today — medical publishing — editing a magazine for mental health professionals. I was making $46,000 which wasn’t considered great money back then. The not-for-profit sector has always trailed behind the private sector but a lot of us work in the field because the work is meaningful, and we love it.

Today, I am doing nearly the same work, except I’m editing five publications. I’m making $800 a month. That’s because my field — writing and editing — is no longer valued as a profession. Heck, it’s not even a vocation anymore. People who are writing and editing for the federal government aren’t fairing much better. Once they could command $500 a day, now all the writers and editors are languishing, many working for agencies, at $15 an hour.

Tough times indeed.

In 2006, my husband had a thriving video production business. Today, he’s unemployed and applying for minimum wage jobs. Even the car business, from which he recently retired, was once a lucrative enterprise. Today it’s paying lousy salaries thanks to globalization. Cars, even higher end models, are selling dirt cheap and salespeople are barely making ends meet. Early in his car career, Scott made $60,000 easy. This year, he was limping along making less than $2,000 a month. A welfare mother makes more.

Scott quit cars because the job was costing him, financially and mentally. It was soul destroying sitting in the dealership everyday hoping a doctor or professor would come in and buy the complete package, including warranty. His bosses, the managers, were getting rich, of course. He was digging in, unable to pay the professional fees, his cell phone bill, and business cards.

He took another job with a regular paycheque but he was fired for no reason eleven days later. Our future is now more than uncertain; it’s precarious.

Frantically, I implored him to get another car job.

“I’d rather kill myself,” he said. Can’t argue with that.

Today, he got a call to work the 5 a.m. shift for one of the big box stores. He’ll be lucky to make 50 cents above minimum wage. But I’d rather see him work there, than bury his body over here.

This is a sad career ending for a man who is hard working and enterprising, being the old guy with bad knees stocking shelves. Oh well, at least he’ll get benefits, right?

What a joke that is. Sure, you get benefits in retail but you don’t make enough money to pay the deductible. Scott had benefits in the car business, too. I couldn’t afford the annual checkup at the dentist, and the plan didn’t even pay for his glasses.

Still, we’re lucky. At 60, we’ll still qualify for the CPP and we’re part of the cohort that will still get an old age pension at 65. My friend Ed is not so lucky. He’s two years younger, and he’ll have to wait to get his pension til he’s 67.

Sorry Ed, in Harperland, it’s everybody for themselves.

I’d like Stephen Harper to walk in the shoes of some of us who have lost our way financially, spiritually, mentally. Assisted suicide is looking pretty good right now.

I ask myself the question: are we better off since Stephen Harper became prime minister?

The answer is, “That’s a stupid question.”