Starowicz, Mark (M.) 1946-

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STAROWICZ, Mark (M.) 1946-

PERSONAL:

Born September 8, 1946, in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England; immigrated to Canada, 1954; son of Stanley Marian and Barbara Jadwiga (Kielb) Starowicz; married Anne Wright, December 4, 1982; children: Caitlin-Elizabeth, Madeleine Anne. Education: McGill University, B. A., 1968. Hobbies and other interests: Books, antiquarian newspapers.

ADDRESSES:

Home—R.R. 2, Cavan, Ontario L0A 1C0, Canada. Office—P.O. Box 500, Stn. A, Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Historian, journalist, broadcaster, and producer. Director of History Canada Project, 1997-2000; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), radio and television producer, 1970-91, executive producer of television documentaries, 1992—. Montreal Gazette, reporter, 1967-68; McGill Daily, editor, 1968-69; Toronto Star, reporter, 1969-70; Last Post magazine, co-founder and writer, 1969-73. Radio producer: Five Nights and Radio Free Friday, CBC Radio, 1970-73, As It Happens, 1973-76, and Sunday Morning, 1976-80. Television producer: The Battle of the Crossroads of the Sun, 1973, The Journal, 1982-92, The Third Angel, 1991, Red Capitalism, 1993, Bomb under the World, 1994, Escaping from History, 1994, Gods of Our Fathers, 1994, The Tribal Mind, 1994, The Body Parts Business, 1994, Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo, 1994, War at Sea, 1995, The Dawn of the Eye, 1996, WebofWar, 1996, From Newsreels to Nightly News, US History Channel, 1997, Turning Away, 1998, and Canada: A People's History, 2000-01.

MEMBER:

Association of Toronto Producers and Directors, Canadian Media Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Cybil Award, Canadian Broadcasting League, 1973; Ohio State Documentary Award, 1973; President's Award, 1978; Anik Award, 1987; President's Award for contributions to news broadcasting, Radio Television News Directors' Association, 1988; Golden Sheaf, Yorkton Film Festival, for best science documentary, 1992; Gemini Award for best documentary series, 1995, and best information series, 1987, 1989, 1990, for The Journal; CableAce Award for best U.S. television documentary series, 1997, for From Newsreels to Nightly News; Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian Journalism Foundation, 2000; six honorary degrees.

WRITINGS:

(Editor with Rae Murphy) Corporate Canada: Fourteen Probes into the Workings of a Branch-Plant Economy, J. Lewis & Samuel (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1971.

Making History: The Remarkable Story behind "Canada: A People's History," McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

Starowicz has also published articles in periodicals, including the New York Times Magazine, Time, and Toronto's Globe & Mail.

SIDELIGHTS:

Called "English Canada's most influential broadcast journalist" by Robert Sheppard in Maclean's, Mark Starowicz has worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) since 1970 and has created and produced some of the most popular and longest lasting news and current events programs on both radio and television, including As It Happens, Sunday Morning, and The Journal. Starting in radio for the CBC, Starowicz was, as former boss Trina McQueen told Maclean's Marcia McDonald, "'like the Henry Ford of radio production—developing an assembly line that was very good at putting out very high-quality, uniform programs.'" Starowicz took this talent to television with his decade-long involvement with the current affairs and documentary program, The Journal, a show that averaged about 1.5 million viewers in its 2,772 broadcasts. In 2000 and 2001 he helped to reinvent documentary television in Canada with his groundbreaking, fourteen-part series Canada: A People's History. Time International's Moira Daly and Laura Eggertson called him a CBC "icon," at once "visionary, monomaniacal, charming, scathing, diplomatic and sometimes blisteringly frank." CBC President Robert Rabinovich described Starowicz to Daly and Eggertson as the "'creative genius of this generation.'"

Born in England, the son of Polish immigrants, Starowicz came from a family steeped in what Sheppard termed "regimental pride." His father was a Polish pilot who joined the Royal Air Force and flew missions over Germany, while his mother took part in the Warsaw uprising and was imprisoned by the Nazis. Though Starowicz was born in England, he spent his first seven years in Argentina where his father started an unsuccessful truck business. When that failed, the family went to Montreal, where his father worked as an Air Canada mechanic. Starowicz felt out of place culturally and linguistically in Canada, but by the time he attended Loyola High School in Montreal, he had already become interested in the world of journalism. He later attended Montreal's McGill University, where he served as editor of the school paper. From there he went into print journalism, ultimately co-founding and writing for the Last Post, a left-leaning magazine. Then in 1970, he joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and one of his finest successes was his creation of The Journal. He moved the leading news program of the CBC, The National, to prime time at 10 p.m., and put this new public affairs program immediately following. At its peak, The Journal had several film crews working around the world and became noted for its in-depth documentaries and interviews. With the demise of The Journal in 1992, Starowicz produced quality documentaries for the CBC, such as the award-winning 1996 six-hour history of broadcast news, The Dawn of the Eye, made in cooperation with the British Broadcast Corporation. As McDonald noted in Maclean's, that program "traces the growth of broadcast news from turn-of-the-century American peep-show arcades to the mass-media circus that tracked O. J. Simpson's white bronco getaway."

Starowicz was also the inspiration behind the thirty-hour spectacle, Canada: A People's History, almost four years in the making at a cost of $25 million—the largest budget ever for a CBC production. This is a narrative history of the country as culled from the writings of the very people who lived through it. Fifteen directors took part in filming the series, along with 240 actors and extras who helped to re-enact some of the high points of Canadian history. A terrific gamble for the CBC and for Starowicz, the series began airing in October, 2000, and "proved a triumphant success for the beleaguered public broadcaster," according to Brian Bethune in Maclean's. Some three million viewers turned in to the first episode, and every week at least two million watched the series as it unfolded over 2000 and 2001. Robert Wiersema, writing in Quill & Quire, noted that the production was "one of the crowning achievements of CBC Television's 50-year history."

That program spawned many spin-offs; one of them was Starowicz's personal narrative of the making of that documentary in the 2003 book, Making History: The Remarkable Story behind "Canada: A People's History." This book, according to Wiersema, brings "vividly to life" all the difficulties in production and debates over whose history to include. Starowicz explains in the book how the series was conceived shortly after the 1995 Quebec Referendum as well as after cuts to the CBC budget. Funding fell through and historians debated the efficacy of certain texts, but Starowicz stuck with the project and would not let it die, finally managing to get the large budget together to produce the program. Wiersema felt that Making History manages to be a "suspenseful read" in spite of the fact that most readers already know the series was a huge success. The inclusion of well-detailed setbacks, such as an early rejection by the Film Board and an ice storm that ruined a whole winter's shoot, bring the reader directly into the gargantuan task of production, Wiersema felt. "It's quite an achievement," the same reviewer concluded. Reviewing Making History in Policy Options, Geoffrey Kelley called the book "a highly readable account." Noting that the making of the series "is in its way nothing short of miraculous," Kelley went on to note that Starowicz's account of the production "reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation." Kelley further commented, "What emerges is a story of triumph in the face of … challenges." He further concluded that the "true accomplishment of Starowicz et al" is that they "managed to interest millions of Canadians in the story of our past."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Maclean's, January 20, 1997, Marci McDonald, "Picturing History," pp. 60-61; July 1, 2000, "Passages," p. 16; October 23, 2000, Brian Bethune, review of Canada: A People's History, pp. 62, 68, Robert Sheppard, "Man of History: Canada's Saga Is the Project of Mark Starowicz's Illustrious Career," p. 70; October 8, 2001, Brian Bethune, review of Canada: A People's History, p. 64.

Policy Options, June-July, 2003, Geoffrey Kelley, review of Making History: The Remarkable Story Behind "Canada: A People's History," pp. 94-95.

Quill & Quire, January, 2003, Robert Wiersema, review of A People's History, p. 29.

Time International, October 23, 2000, Moira Daly and Laura Eggertson, "The Landscape Artist," p. 66.