(Update, Oct. 15: KNRR is reported to be back on the air. Digital TV owners in Winnipeg are already filing reception reports online.)

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I’ve covered a lot of topics in this blog since it was first launched earlier this year, but the July 11 post on the uncertain future of KNRR-TV in Pembina, N.D. has stood out among them as being one of the most frequently visited and re-visited pages over the past three months.

KNRR might have been licenced to serve tiny Pembina and the surrounding farms and small towns of northeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, but the station had actually been meant to serve Winnipeg, 100 kilometres to the north.

The business plan seemed to make sense. It was the brainchild of Fargo independent station KVRR, which had decided to put up a 1,400-foot tower near Pembina to relay the Fargo station’s programming into Winnipeg. If a sales office in Winnipeg could just sell enough commercial airtime to cover its own costs plus those of keeping the Pembina transmitter up and running — a fraction of the cost of running a full-service TV station — it could generate a tidy profit for the station’s owners.

All they had to do was to get the station on to Winnipeg’s cable systems, to which the vast majority of the city’s TV sets were connected.

That turned out to be easier said than done.

Winnipeg’s cable companies applied to the CRTC to add KNRR to their lineups shortly after the Pembina station went on the air in January 1986. However, the owners of Manitoba’s TV stations, who were already competing with each other plus WDAZ’s Winnipeg sales office, had no intention of allowing yet another competitor on to their turf.

The broadcasters lobbied the CRTC to keep KNRR off of Winnipeg’s cable systems. In October 1986, they got their wish.

For the next 23 years, KNRR would stay on the air nevertheless, delivering its parent station’s signal to northeastern North Dakota, northwestern Minnesota and the dwindling number of Manitobans using rabbit-ears and rooftop aerials to receive TV signals.

During those years, KNRR was something of a money pit for its owners, generating neither profits nor cash flow. In 2008, however, the economic crisis in the U.S. and the $1-million price tag to convert KNRR over to digital by the June 2009 deadline made the station’s losses intolerable.

The station’s owners appealed to U.S. broadcast regulators to allow KNRR’s analog signal to stay on the air beyond the June 12 digital-switchover date, admitting that they were seriously considering shutting down KNRR, turning in its broadcasting licence and dismantling its tower.

When the appeal was denied, KNRR was left with no choice but to shut off its analog transmitter on June 12. It looked as though the station was dead.

On July 11, this blog suggested that Prairie Public TV give some consideration to buying KNRR while it still had its tower up.

As Winnipeg TV stations were then pleading with government regulators to relieve them of their local programming commitments, and KNRR’s owners seemed to welcome any opportunity to get the station off their hands, it appeared to present Prairie Public with the opportunity to strengthen its brand in southern Manitoba.

Half of Prairie Public’s audience and many of its donors lives north of the border, and four of the corporation’s 17 directors are from Winnipeg — including the chairman of the board — so why not use the Pembina frequency to shoot a signal across the border tailored to its Manitoba audience?

To my surprise, I then found out that KNRR’s owners had decided to keep the station on the air as a “public service”, informing U.S. broadcast regulators in early July that they intended to have the station back on the air with a digital signal by Oct. 18.

An employee of parent station KVRR indicated in an online discussion forum Monday that the date is real, writing that, “KNRR will also be lighting back up very very soon.”

When the station goes back on the air any day now, it will be the first over-the-air digital TV signal to cover Winnipeg and southern Manitoba.

According to TVFool.com, it should be possible to receive a passable signal in Winnipeg if you use a rooftop aerial or live in a high-rise above the ground clutter. Reception is expected to be good to excellent in Morden, Winkler, Altona, Morris and Carman.

KNRR's expected coverage area when it returns to air any day now. (© TVFool.com)

The arrival of the first over-the-air digital signal should be good news for Manitobans who have watched with envy as broadcasters fired up digital transmitters in Vancouver and Toronto while putting off upgrades in Winnipeg until closer to the Aug. 31, 2011 deadline for all Canadian TV stations to go digital.

KNRR’s resurrection is also a good opportunity to reconsider the station’s exclusion from Winnipeg’s cable systems.

In 1986, Manitoba broadcasters objected to KNRR getting a slot on the cable dial out of fear that their Winnipeg-based sales reps would undercut the rates charged by Canadian TV stations and undermine the local programming those advertising dollars helped pay for.

Today, there’s little likelihood that KNRR would ever open a Winnipeg sales office. Just ask WDAZ what a worthwhile pursuit that was — they closed theirs long ago. KNRR would get a less-than-stellar place in the cable lineup to boot, taking over WUHF Fox Rochester’s channel 49.

Even then, whenever a popular Fox show is on a Canadian channel and a U.S. channel at the same time, CRTC rules require that the Canadian signal be carried on both cable channels — which would block out KNRR’s signal during several hours of prime time every week.

Without a Winnipeg sales office, there is no reason to believe that the Pembina station poses any significant threat to either the Winnipeg stations’ profitability or to their (ever decreasing) local programming commitments.

Now that the signal is almost back on the air, MTS and Shaw might as well seek to add it to their offerings.

Michaëlle Jean has been one of the more affable Governors-General we’ve had in recent decades. Her life story appeals to the dreams of the thousands of immigrants who come to Canada every year in search of a better life: the young Haitian refugee in small-town Quebec in the ’60s who went on to become a popular broadcaster and then to hold one of her adopted homeland’s highest offices.

Tactile and expressive, she is also a welcome change from the perceived haughtiness of former governors-general Adrienne Clarkson and Jeanne Sauvé, and the blandness of Roméo LeBlanc and Ray Hnatyshyn.

Likeable as Michaëlle Jean might be, she has occasionally been at the centre of controversy: over her dual Canadian-French citizenship (she renounced the latter), her Québécois husband’s separatist sympathies, and over her decision to eat seal meat during a tour of the north. (Let’s face it: if she didn’t eat it, she would have been accused of being rude to her hosts.)

More recently, Jean was given a public slap on the wrist by the Prime Minister’s Office after she suggested that she was Canada’s head of state during a visit to Paris last week.

As the Governor-General of Canada, she has the powers of the head of state. She can hire and fire prime ministers and cabinet ministers, appoint senators and judges, and veto legislation at her own discretion.

All that prevents her from using these powers is an unwritten agreement — a constitutional convention according to political scientists — that the unelected Governor-General would never use these powers on her own except in a national emergency.

Remember that the next time you hear someone suggest that the Governor-General should be directly elected.

In spite of those tools at her disposal, the Governor-General is not Canada’s head of state. Constitutionally, that job belongs to whoever happens to be the British monarch. Right now, that happens to be the 83-year-old Queen Elizabeth II.

The Governor-General is, theoretically, merely the Queen’s representative in Canada.

The Governor-General’s job has evolved to the point, though, where Michaëlle Jean is our unofficial head of state. When Queen Elizabeth took over as monarch in 1952, many English-speaking Canadians still considered themselves British, and the monarchy was considered an important national symbol.

Over time, the cultural ties between Canada and the U.K. have faded away. Today, Canada and Britain still get along reasonably well in international affairs, but are now as foreign to each other as Premier League football is to NHL hockey and the British class system is to Canadian egalitarianism.

The Queen is well aware of this, and has accepted without complaint that Canadian governors-general should take on more head-of-stateish obligations.

She and other members of her family probably sense this every time they visit Canada and hear Canadians straining to familiarize themselves with royal protocol that British citizens know by heart — such as that the Queen is to be referred to as Your Majesty, never as Your Highness.

The royals might even note a slightly strained look on Canadians’ faces as they remember the correct terminology, forcing themselves to suppress the polite way of introducing one’s self in Canada, which is to use first names as soon as possible.

No, I will certainly not just call you Bill! And even though I'm in Canada, I'm still Your Majesty to you! (Image © The Telegraph)

The royal family might be as out of place in modern-day Canada as Prince Charles and wife Camilla in a crowd of Saturday morning hockey parents, and some Canadians (including myself) might be in favour of making the Governor-General’s head of state role official. But that doesn’t mean change is coming soon.

Making the Governor-General our official head of state would require huge constitutional amendments — if not a whole new constitution — that would have to be ratified by the federal government and all ten provincial governments, taking up massive amount of the government’s time.

It would also need a referendum to give the whole thing public legitimacy, which would also add complications.

Though it might sound like a small task on the surface, changing the Governor-General from Canada’s unofficial head of state to our official head of state would be such a challenging project that there is little appetite to take it on, whether in Canada, New Zealand or even Australia, which narrowly voted a decade ago to keep the monarchy for the time being.

The best thing the Canadian government can do for now, then, is to let the Governor-General go on being Canada’s unofficial head of state and to turn a blind eye when Michaëlle Jean leaves others with the impression that she is the head of state.

That way, monarchists will still have their royals, small-r republicans will have a Canadian doing the heavy lifting as head of state, and the indifferent — the masses of Canadians who couldn’t name more than one or two of the Queen’s four children to save their lives — can be spared having to listen to a debate about an issue they couldn’t care less about.

It would be the ultimate Canadian compromise.

On Feb. 1, 1928, a Northwest Airlines flight departed Minneapolis/St. Paul en route to Fargo and Winnipeg. It was the first international flight for Northwest, which would go on to become one of the USA’s largest international carriers. It was also the start of an 81-year relationship between Northwest and Winnipeggers.

In the not so distant future, Northwest’s name and red-tailed aircraft will disappear forever from Winnipeg James Richardson International Airport as the Minnesota-based airlines is absorbed into Atlanta-based Delta Airlines.

Northwest's Boeing 727s were a familiar sight in Winnipeg from the late '60s until well into the '90s. (© Richard Vandervord)

 

Northwest DC-9 in final colour scheme prior to Delta acquisition. (© Carlos Vaz)

There have been many carriers that have passed through Winnipeg over the years. Some served the city for years, others for just a few months. Let’s take a look back at some of the other airlines that have connected Winnipeggers to the world over the years. If you’ve flown any of these airlines, please share your memories of them — good or bad – in the comments section. I’d love to hear them.

Jetsgo (© Richard Austen)

Jetsgo

Years at YWG: 2002-2005

Destinations: Other major cities in Canada

Remembered for: Extremely low promotion fares (e.g., $10), long delays, increasingly chaotic operation during its final weeks in the air.

Ultimate Fate: Shut down and declared bankruptcy in March 2005. Transport Canada was reportedly close to grounding the airline for safety reasons at the time.

Analysis: Given the alarming details that we’ve learned about this airline from Transport Canada and former Jetsgo employees since the 2005 shutdown, the best thing that could be said about Jetsgo is that no one got killed.

 

Canada 3000 (© Alain Durand)

Canada 3000

Years at YWG: c. 1988-2001

Destinations: Initially Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean and a few routes in Canada. Later began to offer more domestic flights in competition with Air Canada.

Remembered for: Low fares to Europe and tight seating. One joke suggested that the “3000″ stood for the number of passengers it tried to squeeze into each aircraft. Blunt-talking CEO whom the newspapers knew was always good for a quote.

Ultimate Fate: Declared bankruptcy and shut down in November 2001.

Analysis: Was a well-run and usually profitable business when it was still a niche carrier. Putting itself into debt by buying its competitors in 2000-01 and going head-to-head with Air Canada was its big mistake. Was already in trouble by the summer of 2001, and doomed after 9-11.

 

Royal Airlines (© Javier Rodriguez)

Royal Airlines

Years at YWG: Early ’90s to 2000-01

Destinations: Initially flew a lot of European and Sun charters out of Winnipeg. Briefly ran domestic flights toward the end.

Remembered for: Didn’t make a big impression.

Ultimate Fate: Taken over by Canada 3000.

Analysis: Came and went without much fanfare. Neither loved nor loathed by the public.

CanJet (© Andrew Colvin)

CanJet

Years at YWG: Late ’90s to about 2000 or 2001

Destinations: Toronto and points east

Remembered for: Halifax-based discount carrier modeled after WestJet. Had a flight that departed Winnipeg for Toronto at 3 a.m.

Ultimate Fate: Taken over by Canada 3000. Later resurrected under the same ownership as before the sale. Now only operating charter flights.

Analysis: Might have made it if it had been launched prior to WestJet.

  

Canadian Airlines (© Howard Chaloner)

Canadian Airlines

Years at YWG: 1987 to 2000-01

Destinations: Most major cities between Toronto and Vancouver. Connections to other destinations through Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto.

Remembered for: Famous “Wingwalkers” ad, showing Air Canada passengers walking across the wings of two airplanes flying side-by-side to get on a more welcoming Canadian Airlines jet. Narrowly avoiding bankruptcy twice, in 1991-92 and 1995-96.

Ultimate Fate: Purchased by Air Canada in 1999, reportedly just days away from bankruptcy.

Analysis: Made a good effort, but was trying to make money with a full-service, all-things-to-all-people business model that had no hope of profitability in the deregulation era. Barely made it to the end of the ’90s as it was, and even a little more cash in the bank would not have allowed Canadian to survive 9-11 or the SARS outbreak.

  

VistaJet (© John Kelley)

VistaJet

Years at YWG: A few short months in mid-1997

Destinations: Toronto and a few other cities in the region

Remembered for: Barely remembered at all, except by the few passengers it carried and some employees who had a summer job in the airline industry.

Ultimate Fate: Bankruptcy after 3-4 months in operation

Analysis: A small, underfunded company that entered a crowded marketplace without anything to make it stand out from the crowd.

  

Greyhound Air (© Andy Vanderheyden)

Greyhound Air

Years at YWG: 1996-97

Destinations: Most major cities in Canada

Remembered for: Cheeky TV ad showing a greyhound relieving itself on a competitor’s landing gear.

Ultimate Fate: Parent company purchased by another corporation that wasn’t interested in running a money-losing airline.

Analysis: One of the better attempts at launching a discount airline, by capitalizing on Greyhound Bus Lines’ brand name and good advertising. With a more fuel-efficient fleet (its Boeing 727s were gas guzzlers) and point-to-point flights instead of a hub-and-spoke model, it might have done better.

  

Wardair (© Bob Logan)

Wardair

Years at YWG: ’60s, ’70s and ’80s

Destinations: Charters to Hawaii and Europe for many years; a few domestic scheduled flights in the late ’80s

Remembered for: Good service – the details of which founder and CEO Max Ward took an intensive interest . Meals served on fine china and with silverware.

Ultimate Fate: Got itself into financial trouble when it tried to get into scheduled domestic service in the late ’80s. Later taken over by Canadian Airlines (largely for its valuable slots at European airports) for what was considered an inflated price.

Analysis: A company with a fine reputation that should have stuck to its niche as a classy charter airline.

  

CP Air (© Bob Garrard)

CP Air (Canadian Pacific Airlines)

Years at YWG: c. 1942 to 1987

Destinations: Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, with onward connections to California, Hawaii, Ottawa, Montreal and Europe.

Remembered for: Eye-catching orange/silver livery. Boasting that it served its meals using real dishes and utensils, “never plastic”.

Ultimate Fate: Taken over by Calgary-based Pacific Western Airlines in 1986-87 as the nucleus of Canadian Airlines.

Analysis: Was of more value to Canadian Pacific for its good reputation than for the money it made, which was reportedly never much.

 

Pacific Western Airlines (© Alain Rioux)

Pacific Western Airlines (PWA)

Years at YWG: 1979-87

Destinations: Cities in northern Manitoba, B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Remembered for: Buying out Winnipeg-based Transair in the late ’70s. Billing itself as “The Competition” to Air Canada on routes to the other three western provinces. Briefly offering Boeing 767 widebody service to… Regina!

Ultimate Fate: Took over CP Air in 1986-87 with the goal of turning itself into a global airline.

Analysis: PWA was Canada’s most successful airline in the ’70s and ’80s, making a profit every year from 1970 to 1986. Had it continued its conservative approach, and modeled itself after consistently profitable Southwest Airlines in the U.S., it would still be in the skies today. Instead, it threw out a successful business model that had made it money for 16 consecutive years, and replaced it with another business model that no one was having much success with. Too bad.

 

Frontier (© Richard Vandervord)

Frontier

Years at YWG: 1974-86

Destinations: Denver (via Bismarck and/or Minot), with onward connections to the western and southwestern U.S.

Remembered for: Serving steak and wine in Economy Class in the ’70s. Friendly, informal flight attendants and all-economy seating that made it kind of like “WestJet with meal service”.

Ultimate Fate: Bankruptcy in 1986. A new Frontier Airlines was launched out of Denver in 1994 by former managers and employees of the original Frontier, but is otherwise unrelated.

Analysis: A unique airline that was caught up in insane competition in the mid-’80s at its Denver hub (which was also a hub city for both United and Continental at the time). Came under the ownership of dysfunctional People Express, a.k.a. People Distress

  

Nordair (© Howard Chaloner)

Nordair

Years at YWG: 1979-86

Destinations: Dryden, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Toronto and points east

Remembered for: Regional service connecting Winnipeg to northern Ontario. If you stayed on the plane long enough, eventually you’d reach Toronto.

Ultimate Fate: Taken over by CP Air in 1985-86, which was itself taken over by PWA soon afterwards.

Analysis: A benign regional carrier that knew its niche and never reached beyond its grasp.

  

Republic Airlines (© Frank C. Duarte, Jr.)

Republic Airlines

Years at YWG: 1979 to c. 1981 (give or take a year) 

Destinations: Duluth and Milwaukee, possibly Minneapolis as well, with onward connections.

Remembered for: Not much. Never established a strong brand presence in Winnipeg. (Though I once heard that one of its airplanes had so much litter strewn around that it reminded one passenger of the Winnipeg Stadium after a football game.)

Ultimate Fate: Canceled service to Winnipeg during the recession of the early ’80s. Later taken over by Northwest Airlines in 1986. Brand name now used by a U.S. feeder airline unrelated to the original Republic Airlines.

Analysis: Was a logical choice if you wanted to go to Minnesota or Wisconsin, perhaps even to Chicago. But if you were going anywhere else, there were more attractive options available.

Transair (© Bob Garrard)

Transair

Years at YWG: 1947-1979 (Known as Central Northern Airways until 1956)

Destinations: Northern Manitoba, the N.W.T. and Yukon, northern Ontario, Toronto, plus charters to Europe, the Caribbean, Hawaii and other popular destinations. Briefly served Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton in the run-up to its merger with PWA in 1979.

Remembered for: Winnipeg’s hometown airline. Boldly coloured yellow-and-brown airplanes.

Ultimate Fate: Ran into financial trouble in the mid-’70s and began looking for a buyer. Was rebuffed by Air Canada and CP Air before being purchased by Pacific Western in 1977. Merger completed in 1979.

Analysis: Operated too many different types of aircraft: Boeing 707s and 737s, Fokker F-28s, YS-11 turboprops, helicopters and freighters. Even if it had been able to continue on as an independent airline into the ’80s, it probably would have been bought out during the 1985-87 wave of mergers.

 

North Central Airlines (© Aris Pappas)

North Central Airlines

Years at YWG: 1974-79

Destinations: Duluth and Milwaukee, with onward connections to Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit and other cities in the Upper Midwest. Acted as a feeder for larger airlines like American and United.

Remembered for: Casual regional airline run by friendly Midwesterners.

Ultimate Fate: Merged with Southern Airways in 1979 to form Republic Airlines, which was itself taken over by Northwest Airlines in 1986. Some of North Central’s former DC-9s still call in at YWG today. Watch for Northwest aircraft carrying the registration N***NC (the “NC” standing for North Central).

Analysis: A small airline from a different era that was sure to end up merging with or being taken over by someone else.

It was 1989, and revolution was in the air. The Berlin Wall was being torn down and the Communist governments of eastern Europe were, for the most part, peacefully deposed. South Africa had woken up to the fact that white-rule had reached the end of the road. In China, protesters occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to take on the country’s repressive rulers head-on.

Another revolution was unfolding in Canada.

For decades, the young residents of the Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland, run by a religious organization known as the Irish Christian Brothers, had been subject to physical, sexual and emotional abuse. An investigation into allegations of abuse had been started in 1975, but then suddenly abandoned by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary under political pressure.

By the time the file was re-opened in 1989, Newfoundland was a different place. Politicians were no longer willing to cover up what had happened at Mount Cashel, as they had done 14 years earlier.

Details about the abuse at “Newfoundland’s House of Horrors” exploded across the country in October, 1989.

Just as the end of repression in one or two eastern European countries encouraged other countries to quickly follow suit, the end of the suppression of the facts concerning what had happened at Mount Cashel caused other Canadians to come forward with details about similar abuses at other orphanages and residential schools throughout the country.

For the churches that had run the schools and orphanages, it was a public relations nightmare that they were ill-equipped to deal with as they found themselves open for the first time to external scrutiny and unprecedented criticism.

Over the years, as more and more details came out to show that Mount Cashel was anything but an isolated incident – that abuse had been widespread, and routinely covered up as a matter of policy with little corrective action being taken – priests and ministers watched as long-time members of their congregations left and never came back.

Twenty years later, we now have the ability to see how the children of those disillusioned worshippers differ from previous generations of Canadians in their religious views and behaviours.

What it suggests is that young Canadians born between 1980 and 1989 are the most secular generation of Canadians ever – the first generation where a majority say that religion is “not very” or “not at all important” in their lives, and where one out of every seven is an atheist.

The oldest of them will be entering their thirties in a few months’ time, and will begin to make their influence felt as parents, executives and politicians.

The first graph below shows the results of the Canadian wave of the World Values Survey, taken in 2006, organized by the decade in which each of 2,106 respondents was born.*

On the left hand side of the graph, you can see that religion is quite important for those Canadians born in the ‘20s and ’30s: 76% of those born 1920-29 and 77% of those born 1930-39 described religion as being “very” or at least “rather important” in their lives. Only about one-quarter described religion as being “not very” or “not at all important”.

By the time you get to the ‘70s generation, you can see that these thirty-something year old Canadians are almost evenly split between those who say that religion is important to them personally, and those who say it isn’t.

The ‘80s generation, however, is less ambivalent. For the first time in Canadian history, we have a generation where the majority – 57 percent – considers religion to be of relatively little importance.

Importance of religion in Canadians' lives in 2006, by year of birth

The second graph shows the results of a question where respondents were asked to choose which moniker best describes them: a religious person, not a religious person, or a convinced atheist.

Among those Canadians born before 1960, solid majorities in excess of two-thirds described themselves as being religious. The ‘70s generation was the last one to date in which a majority described themselves as religious, and the ‘80s generation was the first generation in which fewer than half would describe themselves as such.

What’s noteworthy about this graph is the sharp rise in atheism among young Canadians.

Among those born in the ‘20s and ‘30s, very few consider themselves atheists. Even among those born in the turbulent ‘60s, no more than five percent described themselves as atheists. But of those born in the ‘70s, nearly one-in-ten call themselves atheists. Among those born in the ‘80s, one-in-seven describe themselves as atheists. While 15 percent is still very much a minority, it’s no longer a fringe group.

Canadians' religious self-description in 2006, by year of birth

If the third graph is any indication, many religious congregations in Canada are dependent on weekly parishioners born before World War II – a generation now in their seventies and eighties.

Among those born between 1920 and 1929, 51 percent were weekly parishioners as of 2006. Among those born 1930-39, the corresponding figure was 36 percent. But among those born after 1960, fewer than one-in-five attend religious services on a weekly basis, compared to about 40 percent who never attend.

Given the fact that many congregations are dependent on weekly parishioners for financial support, this suggests that as the pre-WWII generation ceases to attend regularly due to age and as the Boomers begin to reduce their attendance further down the road, their children and grandchildren are unlikely to be there to take their place. Marginally viable congregations that struggle to make ends meet today face a particularly grim future.

Canadians' attendance at religious services in 2006, by year of birth

The final graph is probably the clearest indicator of the legacy of the Mount Cashel scandals of 20 years ago. This graph is based on a question in which Canadians were asked to rate the importance of God in their lives on a scale of 1 to 10, with a “1” meaning that God is “not at all important” and a “10” meaning that God is “very important” in their lives.

Among those Canadians born before World War II, God is clearly an important part of their lives, with an average rating of 8.4 out of 10 among those born 1920-29 and 8.3 among those born 1930-39.

Among those born during the next three decades, there is little change in the importance of God in their lives, with average scores in the low-to-mid sevens. However, the average rating dips to 6.7 out of 10 among those born in the ‘70s and to just 5.9 among those born in the ‘80s.

Importance of God in Canadians' lives in 2006; average rating on a 1-to-10 scale by year of birth. (1 - Not at all important, 10 - Very important)

Twenty years ago, we watched in amazement as revolution seemed to sweep the world. But throughout history, many of the most important revolutions were not those that took place at gunpoint, but those that were driven by changing demographics.

If the religious attitudes and behaviours of those born in the ‘80s are any indication, Canada’s next generation of leaders are poised to take the country in a much more secular direction, treating religion as being a personal lifestyle choice in which governments will remain neutral – no one will hold it against you if you opt in, and no one will hold it against you if you opt out.

That is the legacy of Mount Cashel.

–

* – Weighted by gender and province

Staff at Brandon’s CKX-TV graciously said farewell to viewers just a few hours ago, bringing 54 years of broadcasting history to an end.

The Brandon station was one of several local TV outlets across Canada to shut down this year, rendered unprofitable by sinking ad revenues, high digital switchover costs and the inability to secure space on satellite feeds.

CKX signed on in 1955 as Manitoba’s first privately owned TV station, owned by Western Manitoba Broadcasters Ltd.

After a failed attempt to launch a Winnipeg station in 1974 — the broadcasting licence was instead given to upstart Canwest Broadcasting, which launched CKND (now Global Winnipeg) a year later — CKX’s sister station 13 MTN (now Citytv Winnipeg) was launched out of Portage in 1986. MTN was relocated to Winnipeg in 1999 to be rebranded as “A-Channel”, leaving CKX once again as Manitoba’s only non-Winnipeg-based station.

As noted by the anchors, CKX was a “training station” staffed by young university and college graduates from all over Canada, many of whom gained valuable experience in Brandon prior to moving on to Winnipeg and other larger markets.

The final minutes of CKX-TV

Related: TV Stations No Longer a Licence to Print Money

Brian Lee Crowley of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) is supposed to be today’s keynote speaker at a Frontier Centre for Public Policy lunch event at the Fort Garry Hotel. Though I won’t be on hand for the event, I did have a chance to look at sales pitch put out by the Frontier Centre.

If you haven’t heard of AIMS, it’s more or less a Halifax-based regional version of the Fraser Institute — a proponent of deregulation, lower taxes and privatization.

Thus, the Frontier Centre used its luncheon notice to throw out a bit of red meat to Winnipeggers awaiting the arrival of an ideological revolution along the lines of what happened in Britain and New Zealand in the ’80s and ’90s:

“In the 1960s, our huge Boomer generation helped create widespread joblessness and anxiety. That, plus Quebec’s recurring threat to break-up the country, caused Canada to jettison its traditional values — a ferocious work ethic, a commitment to the family as the most important social institution, a suspicion of overweening government and an aversion to dependence — in favour of a vast expansion of the welfare state.”

Rather bold stuff.

In his speech, Crowley is expected to expound on how he believes that the work ethic has been undermined in Canada by the welfare state, and to conclude his talk with a call to roll back government regulation and social programs.

The funny thing, though, is that OECD statistics seem to suggest that Canada’s work ethic is quite healthy by international standards — contradicting Crowley’s pessimistic outlook on the Canadian labour force.

For example, the chart below shows the incidence of long-term unemployment — that is, unemployment of 12 months’ duration or more — as a percentage of all unemployment. The incidence of long-term unemployment is lower in Canada than in just about any other country covered by the OECD, except for New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea.

Long-term unemployment rates by country, 2007: People unemployed 12 months or more as a percentage of all unemployed people. Source: OECD

It’s also interesting to look at how many hours the average employed person puts in per year. Canadians by no means put in the longest hours, but there’s a gap of less than five percent between us and the famous long-hours cultures of Japan and the United States. (We should not, however, seek to close that gap. As working hours go up, productivity and economic well-being tends to go down — as can be seen by comparing the relatively low-income countries at the top of the chart to the high-income countries at the bottom.)

Average working hours per employee by country, 2008. (Source: OECD)

Sources:

OECD in Figures

OECD StatExtracts

Like it or not, there’s a possibility that prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government will be brought down on a confidence motion later this week, triggering an election that would likely be held in early to mid-November.

Under Canadian law, federal elections are normally held on a Monday or Tuesday, which at one time made sense.

Election timing is based on history more than anything else. Farmers might only be a small proportion of the population today, but at one time they were a huge part of the electorate. And until automobile ownership became commonplace in rural areas after World War II, there was often no such thing as a “quick dash into town” to cast your vote if you were a farmer. It was a day trip.

A Saturday election would be problematic as it might cause the farmer’s journey to extend into the Sabbath.

Sunday might be just the other half of the weekend for many modern-day Canadians, but at one time it was untouchable. Eaton’s would close its display window curtains on Saturday night so that any Sunday passersby would not be distracted from their religious contemplations by crass materialistic thoughts.

And, once in the early ’30s, when it was announced that participants in a cross-country air race would be arriving in Winnipeg on a Sunday, the city’s clergymen reacted with horror. Excitement? On a Sunday? How inappropriate!

Needless to say, a Sunday election was absolutely out of the question.

Thus, many jurisdictions opted for Monday or Tuesday elections.

Today, farmers are able to reach polling stations much more easily than their predecessors, and Canada is a much more secular place.

So why not change over to a weekend polling date, in recognition of the fact that the conditions that required weekday voting have largely dropped by the wayside, and that it makes little sense to hold elections when a large proportion of the population is unable to easily get to the polls during eight hours of the (typically) 12-hour voting window?

After all, German voters went to the polls on Sunday without much complaint, managing a 71-percent turnout that is considered low by German standards, but robust by Canadian standards. Australians and New Zealanders are also weekend voters — both countries normally going to the polls on a Saturday.

So, if we’re going to have an election this November, let’s at least make it the last one that we hold on a day more convenient to the dead than to the living. Next time around, let’s have changes in place to the Elections Act so that we have a Saturday election. (That goes for Manitoba, too.)

Looking for a cheap getaway to the sunny southwestern U.S. this winter? You might want to consider flying Allegiant Air out of Grand Forks — if you’re prepared to be flexible.

This new option for Winnipeg travelers received some attention in the Winnipeg Free Press recently, which noted that Allegiant’s Grand Forks operation was taking traffic away from Winnipeg’s James Richardson International Airport.

Not that anyone need cry for Air Canada, WestJet, United or Northwest/Delta. Allegiant only competes with them for price-sensitive infrequent travelers — the major airlines’ least valuable customers, a group of customers that the airlines have been looking to reduce their dependency upon by getting rid of seat capacity.

Choosing Grand Forks as a destination wasn’t much of a surprise. Part of Allegiant’s business plan has been to fly into airports located relatively close to Canadian cities in order to attract Canadian vacationers. In addition to Grand Forks, these border airfields include Bellingham, Wash. (80 kilometres south of Vancouver) and Plattsburgh, N.Y. (120 kilometres south of Montreal).

Is it worth the trip to Grand Forks to catch an Allegiant Air flight this winter? Here are some pros and cons to consider:

Pros

• Allegiant charges reasonable fares. A November Grand Forks-Las Vegas round trip costs $295 to $425 U.S. ($322 to $464 Cdn.), taxes and fees included.

• Friendly employees. Many posters on a popular airline passenger review web site have commented favourably on Allegiant’s friendly, motivated crews — qualities that are in short supply on troubled rival United Airlines.

• Non-stop flights. Unlike most U.S. airlines, Allegiant doesn’t pass its passengers through a hub. Once you’re on the aircraft, you’ll go straight to your destination, sparing yourself the time and inconvenience of a connection in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Chicago or Denver. (Their destinations from Grand Forks are limited, however, to just Phoenix and Las Vegas.)

Cons

• Low-cost airlines don’t necessarily offer the lowest fares. A Nov. 15-22 Grand Forks-Las Vegas round trip on Allegiant costs $464 Cdn. taxes and fees included, plus additional charges for checked baggage and beverages — not to mention the cost of getting to Grand Forks. On the same dates, WestJet is offering Winnipeg-Vegas and Vegas-Winnipeg non-stops for $455 Cdn. — taxes, fees, checked baggage and beverages included, and a much shorter trip to the airport. Charters might even offer better fares from Winnipeg.

• Few options for rebooking if you miss your (non-refundable) flight. Allegiant only operates a handful of flights per week out of small markets like Grand Forks.  Miss a Sunday flight to Las Vegas, and your choices will be (perhaps) to go on standby for Thursday’s flight, make an expensive last-minute booking on a network airline, or cancel your trip entirely. Plan your schedule keeping in mind that snowstorms can cause highways to be closed between Winnipeg and Grand Forks, and that border crossings can sometimes take longer than expected.

• All the extras cost extra. Bring extra U.S. cash with you for beverages ($2-$5 per serving) and, if you haven’t already purchased it online, baggage check-in ($15-$35  for the first checked bag, $25-$35 for a second bag), plus any other unexpected expenses that might come up. The same caution can be made for many other airlines, so always choose carefully.

• Limited legroom and no seat recline. Allegiant’s aircraft have charter-style seating, with only 30 inches (2.5 feet or 76 cm) between the back of your seat and the seat in front of  you. If you’re taller than 5′ 8″ (1.73 m), then you might be better off on WestJet, whose aircraft offer two to four inches more legroom.

It’s tempting sometimes to look across the night sky at the array of stars out there, and wonder whether or  not there is other life in our Universe. And if so, what is life like out there?

It’s a question that has preoccupied humans for centuries, but which has never been solved.

Scientists have made impressive strides toward determining whether or not other solar systems could support life, however. Using advanced technology, they have now been able to pick out more than 300 planets circling other stars out there in the distance. Most of these planets have been “gas giants”, similar to Jupiter and Saturn in our solar system.

However, earlier this year, signs showed up of a rocky planet circling a star called Corot-7, about 500 light years from Earth. Planet Corot-7b is too hot to support life, however, with tomorrow’s daytime high estimated at a scorching 1,000 to 1,500 degrees Celsius — hot enough to melt copper.

Though the search for planets has become easier, the search for life remains more difficult.

Perhaps it is possible that someday we’ll pick up a faint radio signal from a distant planet, or that they’ll pick up a signal from our planet. However, it has been only about 90 years since high-powered radio broadcasts began here on Earth.

With our own galaxy being about 100,000 light years across, these radio signals traveling out into space are only just starting to leave our galactic back yard after all those years, and won’t even be out of the neighbourhood for another two or three thousand years.

To put the vastness of the Universe into perspective, imagine yourself standing in front of the Richardson Building, at Portage and Main, with a tennis ball in your hand.

That tennis ball represents the Sun. (The bright thing in the sky, not the newspaper.)

The Earth orbits a mere 7.2 metres (23 feet, 7 inches) away — six billion people and all the world’s continents reduced to a tiny sphere with a diameter of six-tenths of a millimetre.

Neptune and Pluto continue to orbit out on the fringes of the solar system. Relative to our tennis-ball Sun at Portage and Main, Neptune is about the size of a mere pebble out by the intersection of Main and Graham.

To get to our nearest neighbours in the galaxy, you’d have to get on a plane to Minneapolis, make a connection to Washington, D. C. and then take a taxi out to suburban Bethesda, Maryland. Once you get there, you’ll be looking for a ball of light slightly smaller than a marble. That’s the star Proxima Centauri, the next-closest star to Earth after the Sun. Near it are the larger Alpha Centauri A and B.

The nearly 2,000 kilometres between Winnipeg and Bethesda would represent the dark, cold, silent emptiness between the Sun and Proxima Centauri.

Even if you took a longer trip to Sydney, Australia, it would still only take you the equivalent of 31 light years from our tennis-ball Sun. In celestial terms, 31 light years is considered “local”. Only a small number of stars are that close to Earth.

To find life out there in our great, vast Universe, we are possibly looking for that one star in a billion or even a trillion — or more — that has just the right conditions to support life.

With our galaxy containing about 200 billion stars by more conservative estimates, a one-in-a-billion incidence of life might mean that our galaxy is home to hundreds of planets that support life.

And our average-sized galaxy is thought to be just one of at least 100 billion galaxies in the Universe.

A one-in-a-billion incidence of life in the Universe would still leave room for 20 trillion planets harbouring life in our Universe.

Even if only one in a trillion stars have life within its solar system,  it’s plausible that ours might be just one of 20 billion worlds in our Universe — three for every man, woman and child on Earth.

The next time you look up into the night sky, give some thought to the fact that in the bigger scheme of things you, I and more than six billion other human beings are essentially sharing a tiny speck of dust.

Here’s something interesting to consider if you’re into politics or the social sciences at all.

In 1981, Australian pollsters asked their compatriots whether they were an active member of a political party, an inactive member, or not a member at all.The average age of an active Australian political party member in 1981: 36 years.

In 1995, Australians were asked the same question a second time.  The average age of an active Australian political party member in 1995: 49 years.

In 2005, pollsters asked the same question a third time. By this time, the average age of a card-carrying member of an Australian political party was 55 years.*

Had there been a healthy intake of younger people into Australia’s political parties, the average age of an active party member should have only increased slowly over those years, in response to declining birth rates and longer life expectancies.

The average age of a card-carrying partisan shouldn’t have shot up by 19 years in just 24 years — the average 1981 party member having been born in 1945, and the average 2005 party member having been born only five years later, in 1950.

But that average party member age did skyrocket by 19 years between 1981 and 2005, suggesting that the parties’ attempts to engage younger Australians have been decisively rejected.

Not that this will matter much over the course of the brief Australian electoral cycle, where the public typically goes to the polls every three years.  But think ahead 15 years, and you’re looking at a future of shrinking constituency associations, an increasingly limited talent pool, and greater difficulty withholding nominations from fame-seekers who go on to become human train wrecks.

Regrettably, no directly comparable data has been gathered in Canada to determine whether or not we’ve seen the same trend here over time. But there’s little to suggest that Canada wouldn’t follow the same trend.

When the same question finally was asked in Canada in 2006, the average card-carrying member of a Canadian political party was 55 years of age.

Like Australians, we’re neither as civic-minded as the northern Europeans, nor as passionate about politics as the Americans. In both Canada and Australia, federal politicians are often viewed as rude loudmouths or hilariously inept. A TV network that pre-empts a hockey game in Canada or a footy match in Australia for a leaders’ debate or election night results better be ready to see its switchboard light up with calls from angry sports fans.

One wonders what will happen to Australia’s political parties fifteen years from now, when the average active party member will be  about 70 years old, and starting to be slowed down by the effects of age, if the 1981-2005 aging trend hasn’t been reversed by then.

One wonder what will happen to Canada’s parties, if we are indeed seeing the same trend here.

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* – Source:  World Values Survey

Updated Sept. 15 at 12:34 p.m. with additional information about Canada.