This study examines the efficacy of the Canadian Memory Fund to advantage the use of digital archives for the purposes of developing historical consciousness in Canadian students and life-long learners. The perceived significance of digital archives to this end is reflected in the launch of the Department of Canadian Heritage’s (PCH) Canadian Culture Online Program (CCOP) in 2000. Employing a qualitative research design, this study examines how PCH defined the challenges to Canadians’ historical memory, and conceived of a technological solution to this inherently cultural and educational challenge. Using a case study, the strategies deployed by the CBC and Radio-Canada digital archives units, funded recipients of the CMF, to achieve the intended goals of the CCOP, and whether the resulting websites meet the technical criteria for the study of historical consciousness, are examined.

Since its rise to prominence in the 1920s, Canadian radio drama has become a topic of growing interest among scholars in the fields of media studies, communications, and literature. During the Second World War, radio drama became an important medium of entertainment for home front civilians, and was utilized as propaganda by the CBC to garner support for the Canadian war effort. At this time, radio drama also became an important artistic outlet for wartime artists to express their political and social values and beliefs during the war. While scholars have examined the art of radio drama in light of its artistic, dramatic and literary value, few have yet to examine the music composed for these dramas. This thesis draws on these scholars as well as archival materials from the John Weinzweig fonds and the CBC Music Library fonds located at Library and Archives Canada, and the CBC radio drama script collection located at the Concordia Centre of Broadcasting and Journalism Studies to examine the incidental music written by John Weinzweig for CBC wartime radio dramas. By considering how composing for this artistic medium impacted his musical language at this time, this thesis examines his scoring for the series New Homes for Old. Specifically, I problematize the modification and simplification of the serial technique in his incidental works, and consider the challenges that informed Weinzweig’s approach to radio drama composition. I propose that Weinzweig’s simplification of his serial technique may be understood in relationship to the social and political climate of the 1930s and 1940s, and within the context of leftist socialist movements, notably the Popular Front. I argue that Weinzweig’s engagement with radical socialism during this period may have prompted him to adopt a simpler and more accessible musical language that reflected and embodied the cultural, political, and aesthetic ideals of the Popular Front. Le théâtre radiophonique canadien est devenu un sujet très prisé parmi les chercheurs dans les domaines des médias, des communications, et de la littérature. Pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, le théâtre radiophonique est devenu une forme de divertissement populaire pour les Canadiens et était souvent utilisé comme un outil de propagande par la CBC. À cette même époque, le théâtre radiophonique est aussi devenu une forme d’expression pour les artistes du temps de guerre pour exprimer leurs valeurs sociales et politiques. Bien que plusieurs chercheurs aient examiné l’art du théâtre radiophonique sous l’angle de sa valeur artistique, dramatique, et littéraire, peu ont examiné la musique qui a été composée pour ces drames. En se servant des matériaux d’archives trouvés dans les fonds “John Weinzweig” et les fonds “CBC music library” situés à la Bibliothèque et Archives Canada (BAC), ainsi que la collection “CBC Radio Dramas” située au Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism Studies (CCJBS) à l’Université Concordia, cette thèse examine la musique de scène écrite par John Weinzweig pour les émissions de théâtre radiophoniques présentées par la CBC pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. En considérant comment le genre radiophonique a influencé le langage musical de Weinzweig, cette thèse examine ses oeuvres pour la série New Homes for Old. Plus précisément, cette thèse examine la modification et simplification de la technique sérielle utilisé par Weinzweig dans ses oeuvres radiophoniques, et considère les défis qui ont influencé son approche compositionnelle. Je suggère que la simplification de la technique sérielle utilisée par Weinzweig peut être étudiée en fonction des conditions politiques des années 1930 et 1940, et aussi en fonction des mouvements politiques de gauche et plus particulièrement du Front populaire. Je soutiens que l’engagement de Weinzweig avec les valeurs socialistes lui a permis d’adopter un langage accessible qui reflète les idéaux culturels, politiques, et esthétiques du Front populaire.

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The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has been a force on Canadian airwaves for nearly a century. Within that timeframe, kilometres of textual records and thousands of hours of audiovisual recordings have been produced. Those records are evidence of the CBC’s role in mirroring and developing Canada’s national consciousness. Yet, the CBC’s records are scattered throughout Canada in multiple archival institutions. This thesis analyzes the development of these archives, with special attention to the only repository the CBC links to on its “Resources and Archives” webpage: The CBC Digital Archives. With consideration of the challenges and opportunities presented by digital culture, this thesis aims to uncover the role of the CBC Digital Archives within CBC’s archival landscape and its wider broadcasting policies and mandate. / May 2017

From the earliest days of English-language Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television (CBC-TV), the military has been regularly featured on the news, public affairs, documentary, and drama programs. Little has been done to study these programs, despite calls for more research and many decades of work on the methods for the historical analysis of television. In addressing this gap, this thesis explores: how media representations of the military on CBC-TV (commemorative, history, public affairs and news programs) changed over time; what accounted for those changes; what they revealed about CBC-TV; and what they suggested about the way the military and its relationship with CBC-TV evolved. Through a material culture analysis of 245 programs/series about the Canadian military, veterans and defence issues that aired on CBC-TV over a 40-year period, beginning with its establishment in 1952, this thesis argues that the conditions surrounding each production were affected by a variety of factors, namely: (1) technology; (2) foreign broadcasters; (3) foreign sources of news; (4) the influence of the military and its veterans; (5) audience response; (6) the role played by personalities involved in the production of CBC-TV programs; (7) policies/objectives/regulations set by the CBC, the Board of Broadcast Governors and the Canadian Radio-Television Commission (later, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission); (8) ambitions for program development and the changing objectives of departments within the CBC; (9) economic constraints at the CBC; (10) CBC-TV’s relations with the other producers of Canadian television programming, like the NFB; and, (11) broader changes to the Canadian social, economic, political and cultural scenes, along with shifts in historiography. At different times, certain of these conditions were more important than others, the unique combination of which had unpredictable results for programming. The thesis traces these changes chronologically, explaining CBC-TV’s evolution from transmitting largely uncritical and often positive programming in the early 1950s, to obsession with the horrors of war and questioning of the military’s preparedness by decade’s end, to new debate about the future of the forces and the memory of war in the 1960s, to a complex mixture of activism, criticism and praise in the 1970s and 1980s, and, finally, to controversy and iconoclasm by the 1990s.