Response to Sun News Interview with Margie Gillis by Chris Dupuis

On June 1, 2011 Sun New anchor Krista Erickson interviewed Canadian dance icon Margie Gillis, ostensibly as part of an “ongoing examination of funding to the arts”. What resulted was an unfortunately typical right-wing attack on the systems that fund arts and culture within our country. Much has already been written about the economic benefits of funding the arts, as well as the fact that it represents such a small part of our budgets that cutting it does not amount to any measurable savings in the greater scheme of things.


While many of the responses to this interview have deftly wielded statistics that decisively prove these things, I highly doubt Erickson is stupid or unprepared enough to have missed this information when conducting this interview. Her commentary here is not the result of ignorance or as Gillis says “a lack of compassion”. It stems from something much more sinister.


One of the things I found most surprising about this interview was the fact that Erickson so blatantly acknowledges her hatred of the arts. During the conversation she self-identifies as a “cultural philistine”, which says just as much about the organization she works for as it does about her. Would Sun News send someone who self-identifies as an anti-Semite to cover a story on the Jewish community? Would they send a White Nationalist to report on Caribana? We are living in an era where the notion of journalistic neutrality has all but disappeared and I understand that Erickson isn’t claiming to be unbiased. But for a reporter to so blatantly declare their prejudices on a particular subject during an interview reflects the unfortunate reality of how low journalistic standards are falling in this country.

Given her position, I don’t doubt that Erickson sees no value in funding the arts. And why should she? If you don’t make use of a particular service the government offers, you may very well think they shouldn’t offer it at all. If you believe women should be kept barefoot and pregnant, you probably won’t be supportive of funding for the Canadian Women’s Hockey team. If you are a life-long vegan, you are not going to see the value in government subsidies to the animal industry. If you were born and raised in an economically and socially privileged family in Canada, you might have a hard time understanding why the government provides funding for refugees who come from other countries and haven’t enjoyed all of the benefits you have.

What may have escaped Erickson in this interview is the fact that we live in a democracy and one of the principles of a democracy (particularly an extremely wealthy one like Canada) is that we commit to collectively pooling our financial resources through various forms of taxation and then rely on our elected officials and the agencies they oversee to use those funds for various programs and services. None of us are going to think everything our government spends money on is worthwhile.

But arts funding still amounts to such a small amount of money. So why do those on the right want so desperately to see it cut? After all, cultural funding is about patriotism and protecting our national identity. It is about telling our stories, remembering our histories, and presenting our culture to the rest of the world. Surely a proud Canadian like Erickson could see the value in those things, even if she dismisses the work of an artist like Gillis.

The real reason that the right-wing wants to see arts funding cut is not because of the minuscule amount of money it will save or even because they are unpatriotic. It’s because most art (and most artists) espouse left-wing values. Removing funding for arts and culture is about silencing the voices they most passionately disagree with. And you can hardly say you want to have a dialogue when you don’t want to hear what the other side has to say.
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Response to Don Peat's Article on Catherine Frid's Homegrown

I’ve never written for the Toronto Sun, but it must be fun coming up with all those flashy covers. Words like “Perv”, “Killer”, and “Terrorist”, (especially when spelled with exclamation points!!!) are great for grabbing people’s attention and keep the paper flying off the stands. Photos of scantily clad women also do the trick. My personal favourite is when they combine a photo of a partially nude woman with some word like “Murder!”, which actually references a completely different story. Way to sell papers! These folks really are geniuses.

In his story in the July 30th issue writer Don Peat took on the Summerworks Festival, and specifically the new play Homegrown by writer Catherine Frid. The piece is an autobiographical work which tells the story of Frid’s experience meeting and interviewing Shareef Abdelhaleem, one of the convicted members of the Toronto 18; the group which hatched an unsuccessful plot to blow up targets in Toronto. Peat tells his readers that the play is a “sympathetic portrayal” of a terrorist and insinuates that Frid is anti-Canadian. He points out (in the headline no less) that taxpayer dollars are supporting the play, and then lists in the body of the article the support that Summerworks gets from various levels of government.

I know that Peat and the rest of the Sun editorial team have a difficult task selling papers in today’s dwindling media market and that putting a photo and headline like this on the front page is a surefire way to get people to pick up the paper. But seriously, don’t you want to have a least a little bit of journalistic integrity?

Peat has written an opinion piece (disguised as a news story) about a play he has not seen or read. He also obviously didn’t do any research into the financial workings of the Summerworks festival if he thinks that the operating funding they get somehow gets passed on to the artists for the purposes of producing their work. A quick phone call to the festival would have told him that artists pay a fee to participate in the festival and then take home the box office. Maybe he should consider becoming a Canadian correspondent for Fox News. They love this kind of under-researched, poorly written, shock journalism.

Is this actually what our cultural discourse is coming to in Toronto? I understand and appreciate freedom of speech and I think Peat is perfectly entitled to his opinion. He is not, however, entitled to his own facts. Journalists have a responsibility to research the subjects they are writing about and regardless of whether or not they want to present an argument designed to swing the reader’s mind one way or another, they absolutely cannot just make things up because they want them to be true, even if it sells papers.

Oh course this article is likely to fuel ticket sales for Frid’s play, as well as the entire festival and we all have Peat to thank for that. But the larger question of whether or not tax dollars should be spent funding the arts has reared its head again and, judging by the comments on the Sun website, there is still a huge amount of work that the arts community needs to do in terms of educating the general public on this issue.

Funding culture in Canada (including all art forms, publishing, television, and radio) is not about lining the pockets of lazy artists who make work that is not successful enough to be financially viable. It is about protecting and promoting Canadian culture. Funding culture in Canada is an act of patriotism. It is about loving our country and wanting to see our stories, our ideas, and our viewpoints both represented and challenged.

Perhaps Mr. Peat thinks that Canadian culture should only be NHL hockey and American television? If so, then I would say that he is one who is anti-Canadian.
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