The CBC's Ambassador to Quebec (1971-1977)

After the October Crisis in 1970, when a Quebec cabinet minister was murdered and an English trade commissioner kidnapped by the extremist wing of Quebec separatists, Eric Koch was appointed regional director of Quebec radio and television English-language broadcasts. His job was primarily diplomatic. He was appointed because he was not an Anglo-Saxon, which, it was thought, was an advantage at a time of French-English tension. And so it was. He was in Montreal when the separatist leader René Lévesque was elected premier of the province. Lévesque, a highly successful broadcaster, had been an old colleague of Koch's in the CBC's International Service in the 1950s. The atmosphere in the Maison Radio Canada, in which the representative of the English CBC were, so to speak, tenants, was highly political but Koch managed to survive his six years in Montreal without any major diplomatic crisis, even though his French was merely adequate. He was disappointed that there was little he could do to increase the audience of the local suppertime show and to improve the number of Quebec-produced programs on the English networks but had no regrets when he returned to Toronto in 1977. Two years later, when he became sixty, he retired from the CBC.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Eric Koch
• Quiet Revolution
• October Crisis
• René Lévesque
• Raymond Davide
• CBC
• separatists
• English Canada
• French Canada
• Quebec separatism