FIND AND REPLACE
After 28 years as the chief correspondent for the CBC’s flagship news program, Peter Mansbridge announced this week that he will step down from the position on July 1, 2017. As the CBC looks to a Mansbridge- free future, here’s a shortlist of possible successors: IAN HANOMANSING A 30-year CBC veteran who hails from Atlantic Canada, the part of the country that the CBC thinks humour comes from. Most importantly, he’s been a backup anchor on The National for years.
WENDY MESLEY
The frequent backup anchor for The National and, for a brief time in the early 1990s, Peter Mansbridge’s wife. It is a scientific fact that watching The National becomes dramatically more interesting when this tidbit of narrative tension is known.
GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS
The former host of The Hour has a career of getting non- CBC jobs — and then being dismissed from them unusually quickly. ABC did it 10 years ago with The One, CNN cancelled his interview show after seven episodes and Rogers sent him packing off their rejigged version of Hockey Night in Canada. So, Strombo might be available for TV again.
CONNIE WALKER
The “new National won’t look like old one,” you say? Boom: Connie Walker. She grew up on the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan. She started out as a CBC intern in Halifax. She was on Street Cents. She’s filed segments on The National about missing and murdered Indigenous women. She’s almost a literal Millennial, for God’s sake!
NORM MACDONALD
The former host of SNL’s Weekend Update? The 2016 host of the Canadian Screen Awards? A born-andraised Ottawan whose brother Neil is already a CBC journalist? A flagship news program would certainly be a “big rethink,” to quote another CBC buzzphrase.
ANYONE NICE AND BLAND
How did Peter Mansbridge get into journalism? He was working at the Churchill Airport when a CBC manager heard his voice. What does he to do for fun? He has a cottage and nurtures a noticeable preoccupation with WWI and the Franklin Expedition. These are the attributes of a man who can occupy the same chair for 30 years without complaint. Anybody pining for Mansbridge’s job would do well by loudly talking about how they spent their weekend sorting Rush albums and attending an alcohol- free potluck with their non- threatening ethnic friends.