What Television Remembers

Author: Jennifer VanderBurgh

Publisher: McGill-Queen’s University Press

Television in Canada has been undervalued as a cultural form. Despite being publicly funded, Canadian television programs are also notoriously difficult to access once they go off the air, which has compounded the problem.

In What Television Remembers, Jennifer VanderBurgh intervenes in the story of the medium in Canada by exploring the long relationship between TV and the city of Toronto. From the first demonstration of television at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1939 and the mass viewing of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation broadcast in 1953 to the late-century installation of TV screens in public spaces around the city, television has shaped Toronto’s collective imagination and affirmed viewers in their multiple identities as local residents, national citizens, and transnational consumers. In a close reading of Toronto-based CBC dramas from the 1960s to 2010, VanderBurgh explains how the city has functioned as a strategic location in CBC programming, reflecting dramatically changing ideas about Canadian identity, community, and citizenship.

About the Author:

Jennifer VanderBurgh is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Saint Mary’s University where she teaches courses on film, television, media, and cultural memory. Her research and advocacy projects are dedicated to policy change that facilitates greater public access to television heritage that has been produced with public money and in the public’s name. Jennifer is past President of the Film Studies Association of Canada, the current Undergraduate Coordinator of the Atlantic Canada Studies Program, and Saint Mary’s Coordinator for the Halifax Interuniversity Film Studies Minor. She is a committee member for the Atlantic Canada Studies and Women and Gender Studies programs at Saint Mary’s University, and is an adjunct in the Department of English at Dalhousie University.