On September 18, 1965, Strabo became Peter (Strabo) Gzowski. Perhaps by that time Borden Spears no longer felt it necessary to hide the identity of his television columnist from Maclean-Hunter managers. In his coming-out column, Peter wrote a sarcastic piece called “Wow! Count Those Stars on the CBC.” To introduce its new schedule, the CBC was sending “stars” like Catherine McKinnon, Norman DePoe, Gordon Pinsent, and Tommy Hunter to western Canada; and Maggie Morris, Knowlton Nash, and Warner Troyer to the Maritimes. “Guess that woke them up out there in viewer-land,” Peter sniffed.17 By October 2, just plain “Peter Gzowski” lamented the fact that on CTV, rival network to the CBC, youth culture seemed to be taking over in shows like A Go Go ’66. Peter also excoriated CTV shows such as Gomer Pyle, Jackie Gleason, and morning cartoons. “As a grown-up,” he concluded, “I expect to get a lot of reading done this winter.”18
On November 1, 1965, Peter returned to This Hour Has Seven Days. Now he thought it was one of the highlights of the CBC’s season. “For one thing,” he noted, “it’s lost its embarrassing, on-air fascination with itself — its self-congratulatory gloating over the week’s mail and telephone calls; its self-glorifying promotion of programs yet to come.” Furthermore, Patrick Watson was a far better co-host than John Drainie, and as long as Laurier LaPierre didn’t try to sing, Peter would continue to like him, too. He admitted that he had once expected too much from the show. He had wanted more analysis. Now he understood that television’s role was not to analyze but to transmit experience. Furthermore, Peter admitted, he was addicted to the show. It wasn’t great journalism, but it was, he concluded, good television.
Two weeks later Peter was singing the praises of Peter Falk, who played a lawyer in The Trials of Danny O’Brien. Peter especially enjoyed O’Brien’s flaws: he lied, cheated, and chiselled. Sometimes he lost cases, and he pursued his ex-wife almost incessantly.19 On December 1, 1965, Peter was pleased with a new show, Quentin Durgens, M.P., which, he thought, might even convince Canadians that “Canadian politics can be dramatic.”20 The star of the new show? None other than Gordon Pinsent, who, apparently, was becoming a real star.
On December 15, 1965, Peter excoriated shows such as Hogan’s Heroes and McHale’s Navy because they trivialized war.21 On New Year’s Day 1966, he gave out “Strabies” for the best and worst in television in 1965. Pierre Berton won for best improved performer, for he had “finally learned to listen to the people he’s talking with.” Gordon Sinclair, the popular and outspoken radio personality, won for best interviewer, and for the “sheer brass” of his questions on religion and income. For sports Peter liked Bob Pennington’s commentary on soccer games. Pennington proved that it was possible to comment “in a reasonably normal voice, to be silent sometimes and sometimes even to criticize what’s going on in the field without spoiling the viewer’s enjoyment.” Laurier LaPierre won Peter’s award for the most perfect moment on live television: while introducing himself, he forgot his own name. Peter thought that CBC’s coverage of the 1965 federal election, hosted by Norman DePoe, was “bungled,” while CTV’s coverage with Charles Lynch was “immaculate.”22 Peter also singled out Singalong Jubilee, Quentin Durgens, M.P., and Wayne and Shuster’s Show of the Week for special praise. He liked Beryl Fox’s film reportage, particularly The Mills of the Gods (1965), one of the first films to criticize the American role in the war in Vietnam.
On January 22, 1966, Peter declared space shots on television dull and boring.23 Two weeks later he thought the same of CBC-TV’s news. At 11:00 p.m. each evening Earl Cameron merely read “someone else’s words.” Peter’s point was that while the medium could be a powerful communicator, it was underused or misused. Where were the “interviews, films, cartoons, diagrams, maps, songs, skits, speeches,” and so on? In other words, where was the visual content on CBC-TV’s news?24 On February 19, 1966, he defended the much-maligned spy series Blue Light, starring Robert Goulet, because the show was a serious interpretation of the detective genre. Now he had grown tired of satires of the genre such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Danger Man, the very television shows, he admitted, that he had once liked. On March 5, Peter thought that colour television, which at the time was available only on American channels, was “a nice gimmick,” but not much of an improvement over black and white. Peter was looking forward to Batman in colour, and so was Alison. “Imagine,” she told her father, “Batman with green teeth and red eyes.”25 On April 2, 1966, Peter noted that, several years after the scandals of the 1950s, game shows were back in fashion.26 Greed, uncomplicated by skill, he pointed out, was the emotion that seemed to appeal most to viewers.27 Two weeks later Peter and his family were still having misgivings about colour TV, so he decided to return the rented set.28
On May 2, 1966, Peter debated whether it was better to watch hockey at Maple Leaf Gardens or live on television. On the one hand, he liked the way television brought the viewer both long shots and close-ups. On the other hand, he disliked some of the commentary, which failed to understand the subtleties of hockey. For instance, when Eric Nesterenko shot wide of the net, it wasn’t necessarily a missed scoring opportunity. He might have been setting up a scoring chance by bouncing the puck off the boards to make it land in front of the net where a teammate was waiting to score.29
Two weeks later Peter was up in arms because CBC’s president, Alphonse Ouimet, had fired Patrick Watson and Laurier LaPierre. Viewers, Peter pointed out, as well as some of This Hour’s guests, including René Lévesque and Pierre Berton, also protested, but in vain.30 On June 4, 1966, Peter was fed up with the expression “would you believe that ...?” The expression, according to Peter, had begun as a joke on Get Smart, with a line like “The building is surrounded by 25 men. Would you believe it?” The other character in the show did not, so Smart, the bungling detective, pared down the number of men to twenty, then fifteen, then ended up with “How about two car hops and a nun?” Even Peter’s tax accountant used the expression, as in “Would you believe that you owe ...?” It was a “pretence of fashionablity,” deemed Peter, and those who used the expression were merely exposing their squareness.31
On June 18, 1966, in Peter’s final column as television reviewer, called “The Vietnam War: TV’s Epic Eastern,” he slammed television coverage of the war. Dissenters were being marginalized, and Peter laid the blame on television, which gave too much time to the opinions of official Washington and almost none to young protesters. In place of debate, television showed specials on President Lyndon Johnson’s ranch, and on Barbra Streisand and Frank Sinatra. “But on a cruel, ugly, sordid war,” Peter railed, which was “sopping up the lives of thousands of young Americans, draining away billions of dollars, slaughtering innocents and innocence, what is here? One side of a many-sided picture.”32
Peter’s television reviews provide a window onto the world of the mid-1960s, a world that was being torn apart by war. His reviews also reveal his thinking on the nature of television as a medium. While most viewers were enchanted by its magic, and while most reviewers continued to review only content, Peter was beginning to examine the relationship of the media to its message. Marshall McLuhan, no doubt, influenced Peter.33 Although McLuhan’s Understanding Media wasn’t published until 1964, just as Peter was beginning to write his TV reviews, articles by McLuhan had appeared beforehand. Since Peter read voraciously and assimilated information rapidly, Understanding Media’s explanation that form and structure of information determine meaning filtered into Peter’s reviews. As Strabo, the skeptical squinter, he did indeed have the ability to see distant objects clearly. And, more importantly, to see through and around images near and far.
In addition to hiring Peter as a television reviewer, Borden Spears published several of Peter’s feature articles. On November 16, 1964, “Do the Toronto Argonauts Lose on Purpose?” was published in Maclean’s under the pseudonym Peter N. Allison. During the 1960s, the once-proud team, founded in 1874, usually finished last. Nevertheless, Peter remained a fan. What was compelling about the Toronto team, he wrote, was the fact that they always lost “marvelously,”