The Gang of 12

My first day of regional leaders' meetings, and I'm wondering if all CBC management sessions are this interesting. The challenges of programming in places like Iqaluit and northern Quebec, especially, are many and costly. The closest community to Montreal, which is the centre of Cree programming, is 9 hours away, making it difficult to get items in the field.

In Iqaluit, the program manager struggles to find and keep people who speak Inuktitut now that government competes for aboriginal employees. And the CBC there is pressured to preserve the language at a time when younger people aren't as well grounded in their original voice. Until I came back up here, I didn't realize how much aboriginal programming in radio is broadcast in the north.

We did some fun team development stuff too, including putting together puzzles in groups of 3. We were instructed to work as a team. Most of us interpreted that to mean our little group. But, as we discovered, the puzzle pieces had been mixed between groups and, so, to succeed you had to work with everyone in the room. There were prizes for the group that finished first--not mine.
However, I did win a giant chocolate bar in an earlier session where everyone had to tell a story about themselves that no one would already know. Of course, that was easy for me.

I revealed that Gordon Lightfoot had asked me to sleep with him when I interviewed him in Yellowknife for News of the North. I didn't give the outcome until the end of the day--gotta keep your audience wanting more...