For
Laura (Harman) Murray , being the keynote speaker at the October 26
th Town Hall on citizen
internet concerns ("Just Who is SHAPING your Internet Future ?") at
Dalhousie University's
McInnes Room, will be a bit of a homecoming.
Her grandfather, Leonard Harman, got an honorary doctorate from Nova Scotia's St FxUniversity, home to Moses Coady's AntigonishMovement, for his many decades of labour on behalf of co-operatives and rural development & peace, in Canada and world wide.
But Harman remains best remembered today for his pioneering work in an early forerunner to today's interactive/two way internet : Canada's own unique contribution to adult education, the Farm Radio Forum.
The Farm Radio Forum, Canada's method of fostering two-way interactivity in mass citizen involvement, (on CBC Radio between 1939 to 1965), was taken up by the UN and introduced in many countries around the world.
It also had other Canadian spin-offs : the Labour Radio Forum and the Citizens Radio Forum (which survives to this day on CBC Radio as Rex Murphy's Cross Country Check-up.)
During the war years, gasoline was rationed and in any case, back rural roads weren't usually plowed in the winter .
Most rural communities had no electricity and were lucky if one or two richer families had a decent battery-powered radio.
The cooperative and adult education movements, flamed into life by the fiery speeches of Moses Coady, were going strong at that time (part of a broader wartime reform movement that led to the 1943 breakthrough for the CCF).
Adult education froze in the winter
Going strong, despite gas rationing, but only in the summer.
The Farm Radio Forum format emerged gradually.
Initially, the leaders of the co-op/adult education movement thought only of using the national radio network of the CBC (itself more or less brand new in 1939) to 'leap over' theunplowed snow-filled back roads to talk totheir rural members.
But without any way for field workers to visit in the winter, how could they be sure anyone was listening and if what they heard actually helped in their local situation?
The broadcasts were weekly and even in the wartime winter, mail could be relied upon ,in those days, to go to and from Ottawa to the remotest farming parts of (southern) Canada in a week.
Ottawa sent out - by mail - a weekly list of questions for the local group to debate after they listened , in someone's kitchen, to the weekly half hour radio panel discussion.
So far, pretty routine adult education stuff.
The Flash of Genius
But then the flash of genius sparked forth, perhaps driven by wartime necessity, because the CBC of 1940 was hardly a populist, bottom-up, sort of organization !
'Still isn't ?' Well, opinions vary.
Anyway, the Ottawa organizers dreamed up a way to ensure that the local meeting secretaries continued to send in their expected weekly summing-up of the local meeting's debate, without needing a field worker to drop in physically to chide them in person.
Why not tell the local meeting that their secretaries' comments would be summed in Ottawa and reported back to the national farm audience on the radio, with direct quotes from the most striking and vivid reports ?
A tempting prospect indeed for local farm notables who never expected to be quoted publicly at any higher level than their local community weekly's pages !
Radio broadcasting was an 'old' novelty by 1940, but a nation-wide broadcast by a interconnected network was still new and literally mind-blowing.
It was hard to believe that you, as an ordinary rural resident, could have lived long enough to expect to hear your written own words - delivered live by the miracle of radio - being broadcast into the homes of farmers andurbanites all across the nation simultaneously.
Remember, in those days, before our multi-channel world, there was a realistic chance that all your scattered family and friends country wide would in fact be listening to the CBC on a local affiliate station.
Wow !
For the first time ever in Canada, the big city experts on the radio had to listen to the voices of the 'little people' and had to adjust their own voiced opinions - live - as they heard the grassroots speak of their real world/ first hand experiences.
The Year 2009 : Progress ?
Cut to Halifax, 2009. The big people are still talking down - one way - to the little people - even on something that should be intrinsicallytwo way - like the Internet.
In August 2009, federal Industry Minister Tony Clement has a cosy private roundtable in Halifax on his proposed copyright act changes.
These roundtables are always intimate affairs , posted with signs saying 'general public keep out'. But at their best, they include representatives of both citizens and of industry and the conversation is two way and probing.
But Clement's Halifax meeting was with industry only.
Many Maritimers felt the Minister would not dare try this sort of thing in Central Canada , where there are well organized activist groups on behalf of the public good in matters digital.
What this region lacked was a meeting space where all the people concerned about just where the internet was going, could say their piece in a two way/ live communication with Internet experts.
A Farm Radio Forum, in other words !
And who better to invite to keynote the discussion than the granddaughter of Leonard Harman, herself a long time activist
in seeing that the general public's wider interests in an open, financially-accessible and neutral Internet were not overshadowed by the specific demands of Internet creators and users ?
At first glance, Laura (Harman) Murray might seem to be too much a pillar of the canadianacademic establishment
to be leading a citizen's movement for reclaiming a role for the general public on theinternet.
She has a PhD from Cornell, was a visiting Fulbright scholar and is a tenured English professor on one of Canada's elite universities, Queens. Her book on Canadian copyright law,
Like many academics these days, she has a blog,
Unlike most academic blogs, her blog posts are not only informed and informative , they are also lively , readable, prose and above allpassionate.
It seems to run in her family, if her great aunt
Mae , a feisty seniors activist extraordinaire, was anything to go by.
Laura hopes to move Canadians into action with her blogs, her articles and her public talks.
Her reoccurring theme?
That internet copyright,access, neutrality and privacy are not just something for experts. They are not even just something for activists.
Increasingly all of us are being forced to get pro-active on these issues because we are finding our hitherto ordinary and accepted daily activities hemmed in and restricted by copyright laws and internet provider policies that seem to act as if every citizen is guilty of something until proven innocent.
Murray comes across restrictions every day in her ordinary (non-professor) life : in what her local school board lets her kids copy for their projects to what SOCAN lets her play on her cello or banjo in her band,
The Swamp Ward Orchestra.
Once again, Canadians need an adult education process to better inform ourselves about our rights and the issues as our world changes drastically from the one we grew up with, thanks to the digital revolution.
Nova Scotia, home to Moses Coady'sAntigonish Movement, just feels like thehistorically appropriate place to start.....
