The Brian Mulroney Institute of Government Fellows Lecture Series Presents

“An Hour of Grim Excitement”: Listening to the North on CBC Radio, 1945–1958

Michael Follert, Sociology Department/Mulroney Research Fellow

Tuesday, March 25, 2025
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Mulroney Hall 4032

In March 1954, the CBC Times promised its radio listeners “an hour of grim excitement” as they were encouraged to tune in for the docudrama, Death in the Barren Ground. The program recounted the fateful journey of three hapless English explorers, wintering in the Northwest Territories and slowly succumbing to death by cold and starvation. It was but one of numerous Canadian radio programs in the postwar period that focused on the North - comprised of regions we now recognize as Dënéndeh and Inuit Nunangat - as a site of adventure, mystery, and dread. In addition to voices in the grip of death, programs featured the sounds of silent expanses, sinister icebergs, and otherworldly acoustics. This talk invites attendees to listen in to a reconstructed soundscape of postwar Canadian radio programming to grasp how the CBC’s theatre of the mind helped produce this imagined frontier and a collective sensibility toward it for listeners in the south.

All are welcome.

Dr. Michael Follert

Dr. Follert is a political sociologist who examines the Canadian state and society through questions of culture, policy, and representation. His current SSHRC-sponsored research, Making Terra Silentium, looks to postwar representations of “the North” on CBC radio and the development of the CBC Northern Service as vantage points for understanding nation-state expansion into Dënéndeh and Inuit Nunangat. Dr. Follert is a Research Fellow with the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government (2024–26).