''Distinguished Canadians'' (originally titled ''Interview'') is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

talk show television series which aired on

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV, or simply CBC) is a Television in Canada, Canadian English-language terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcasting, p ...

from 1971 to 1972.

Premise

John David Hamilton interviewed guests such as

Claude Bissell Claude Thomas Bissell (February 10, 1916 – June 21, 2000) was a Canadian author and educator. Biography He was the eighth president of the University of Toronto from 1958 to 1971. He played a major part in the expansion of the University ...

(academic), Donald Cameron (politician), George Ramsay Cook (historian), Marshall Crowe (

Canada Development Corporation The Canada Development Corporation was a Canadian corporation, based in Toronto, created and partly owned by the federal government and charged with developing and maintaining Canadian-controlled companies in the private sector through a mixture o ...

Gratien Gélinas Gratien Gélinas, (December 8, 1909 – March 16, 1999) was a Canadian writer, playwright, actor, director, producer and administrator who is considered one of the founders of modern Canadian theatre and film. His major works include ''Tit ...

(playwright),

Pierre Juneau Pierre Juneau (October 17, 1922 – February 21, 2012) was a Canadian film and broadcast executive, a one-time member of the Canadian Cabinet, the first chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) an ...

(

CRTC The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC; ) is a public organization in Canada tasked with the mandate as a regulatory agency tribunal for various electronic communications, covering broadcasting and telecommunic ...

Georges-Henri Lévesque Georges-Henri Lévesque (February 16, 1903 – January 15, 2000) was a Canadian Dominican priest and sociologist and a liberal figure during the conservative Duplessis era in Quebec. Biography Born in Roberval, Quebec, the son of Geo ...

(priest, sociologist),

Wilder Penfield Wilder Graves Penfield (January 26, 1891April 5, 1976) was an American-Canadian neurosurgeon. He expanded brain surgery's methods and techniques, including mapping the functions of various regions of the brain such as the cortical homunculus. ...

(neurosurgeon), Allison DeForrest Pickett (entomologist),

Charlotte Whitton Charlotte Elizabeth Whitton (March 8, 1896 – January 25, 1975) was a Canadian feminist and mayor of Ottawa. She was the first woman mayor of a major city in Canada, serving from 1951 to 1956 and again from 1960 to 1964. Whitton was a Canadi ...

(Ottawa mayor) and

John Tuzo Wilson John Tuzo Wilson (October 24, 1908 – April 15, 1993) was a Canadian geophysicist and geologist who achieved worldwide acclaim for his contributions to the theory of plate tectonics. He added the concept of ''hot spots'', a volcanic region hott ...

(geoscientist).

Scheduling

This half-hour series, under the original ''Interview'' title, was broadcast on Mondays at 10:30 p.m. (Eastern) from 23 August to 20 September 1971 in the first season. The second-season episodes were aired on Sundays at 2:00 p.m. from 16 April 1972 to 4 June 1972, after which it returned to the Monday 10:30 p.m. time slot until its final broadcast on 21 August 1972. The title changed to ''Distinguished Canadians'' as of the 30 April 1972 episode.

Reception

In a mixed review, Keith Ashwell of the ''

Edmonton Journal The ''Edmonton Journal'' is a daily newspaper published in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It is part of the Postmedia Network. History The ''Journal'' was founded in 1903 by three local businessmen — John Macpherson, Arthur Moore and J.W. Cunn ...

'' wrote, "In some ways ''Distinguished Canadians'' is interesting. The camera doesn't wander. It likes hard-cropped shots of a face talking. The program insists on a convivial atmosphere here so that the inquisition is surreptitious, the confessions seemingly self-generated. But where it fails, as it did so dismally with Juneau is when J.D. is lulled by his own urbane, assuring style." The ''

Calgary Herald The ''Calgary Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Publication began in 1883 as ''The Calgary Herald, Mining and Ranche Advocate, and General Advertiser''. It is owned by the Postmedia Network. History ''The C ...

''s Bob Shiels said of an episode of Hamilton "talking to"

Hugh MacLennan John Hugh MacLennan (March 20, 1907 – November 9, 1990) was a Canadian writer and professor of English at McGill University. He won five Governor General's Awards and a Royal Bank Award. Family and childhood MacLennan was born in Glace B ...

, "Talking heads. Take away the cameras and they might have had a fair-to-middling radio show". In another review, Shiels said the show has "no production values whatsoever. This CBC offering is simply a conversation – the kind of show identified as radio with a camera pointed at it."

References

External links

* {{Cite web , url=http://www.film.queensu.ca/CBC/Dan.html , first=Blaine , last=Allan , title=Distinguished Canadians , publisher= Queen's University , year=1996 , accessdate=7 May 2010 , url-status=dead , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150114075939/http://www.film.queensu.ca/CBC/Dan.html , archivedate=14 January 2015 CBC Television original programming 1972 Canadian television series debuts 1972 Canadian television series endings