Canada Media
The Media
Canada has no truly national newspaper. The closest thing is the daily Globe and Mail, a Toronto broadsheet also published in a western edition and available extra or less throughout the country. Mainly cities contain a quality paper, like the Toronto Star, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen or Vancouver Sun, which is also available throughout their province. In Quebec, the French-language La Presse is the mainly widely read in the province and there’s also the separatist Le Devoir. The conservative Maclean’s and Time Canada are the mainly famous weekly news magazines. The monthly Canadian Geographic comprises the great outdoors through articles and fantastic photographs.
To low-budget travelers, watching cable television in a motel room might well be the commonest form of entertainment. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) with national and regional broadcasts has the largest volume of Canadian programs. The main commercial station is the Canadian Television Corporation (CTV), a mix of Canadian, American and national output. There are other public-broadcasting channels and private broadcast companies whose output makes Canada’s TV very similar to mainstream American TV. Mainly US stations can also be picked up.
The majority of Canadian radio stations, too, stick to a bland commercial format. Mainly are on the AM band and display little originality - though they can be good sources of local nightlife and entertainment news, and road and weather reports. On FM, on the other hand, the nationally funded CBC channels provide diverse, listenable and well-informed programs - for example This Morning (Mon-Fri 9am - noon), a phone-in program that gives a good grasp of Canadian opinions and happenings. Although few of the large cities boast good specialist music stations, for mainly of the time you’ll probably contain to resort to skipping up and down the frequencies. Driving through rural areas can be frustrating, as for hundreds of kilometers you might only be able to get one or two very dull stations. With this in mind, it’s worth asking your car-rental agency if their cars are fitted with cassette players.