In 1969, a recent university graduate went to Winnipeg City Hall looking for a summer job to fund her trip to Europe. The path she started on that day led Phyllis Yaffe to a distinguished career focused on Canadian cultural entities – including the launch of a major specialty channel and the accolade of Canadian Women in Communications Woman of the Year Award.

Not bad for a librarian from the Prairies.

‘I certainly didn’t start off in this business. I started off stumbling along as most people do getting a ba,’ says Yaffe.

‘My plan was to go to Europe, so I decided I needed to get a summer job. I got a job at the Winnipeg Public Library and it turned out that one of the things I really liked was working in public libraries, so instead of doing the trek to Europe that year I worked in public libraries for two years.’

For a while it seemed that Phyllis had found her niche, in the business of ‘helping people find good books and talking about books.’ She even got a second degree, this time in Library Science, and when she finally made the move to Toronto, worked in libraries there as well.

Then things took a slightly unusual turn – in the fevered feminist atmosphere of the ’70s, Yaffe found herself entering the world of publishing through an unlikely medium: Emergency Librarian, a magazine she helped create prompted by the status of female librarians.

In this way the world of libraries eventually gave way to the world of publishing – Yaffe insists the two are ‘intermingled’ anyway – and her talents as an organizer came to the fore.

‘I created and was the founding director of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, which is there to promote Canadian children’s books. I loved that. It got off to a very good start and it’s happily carrying on to this day being very successful. The success of Canadian children’s books is one of those things that I look back on and think I had some little part in.’

That position led to her five-year stint running the Association of Canadian Publishers, which she recalls as ‘an association with a very strong political bent. It was a very political and lobbying kind of position.’

It was her next position that merged her passions to that point with what was to become her future: as vice-president of marketing at Owl magazine she went back to children’s books and also moved for the first time into the children’s television world. ‘I started to know the television industry as I did the publishing industry and magazines. At the same time, I was asked to create the Harold Greenberg Fund, and so for eight or nine years I did both jobs. I worked at Owl and also ran the fund and got to know the world of drama, writers and producers in this country.’

To boldly go…

These roles came to an end when she was asked to come to Alliance and work on the application for Showcase, a channel that had no precedent. ‘When we got that licence, I became the president and started it in 1994. I have been in the specialty broadcasting business ever since.’

And the thread that ties this story together? A passion for Canadian cultural product: ‘I don’t think I decided on a goal; I decided on a strategy for what I wanted to do: interesting things in the area of Canadian culture. I was always involved in the Canadian cultural scene whatever [my professional field] was – the book publishing industry or television or films. Showcase was the beginning of my interest and efforts in Canadian specialty television, but what is common is the notion that the Canadian cultural creation is what I’m interested in.

‘Having the opportunity to run channels like Life [Network] and History [Television] and the others [at Alliance Atlantis] is a real opportunity to do that every day.

‘The stunning, amazing thing about this part of my career is that when I go home and turn on the tv and look to see what’s on, I know that millions and millions of Canadians do that and they stumble on those things that we’ve put on our channel, which often is really interesting, innovative Canadian television.

‘I take a lot of pride in the fact that [we’ve managed to make] the country more Canadian.’

It should come as no surprise that Yaffe was one of the main drivers behind specialty channels in the mid-’90s. Entering uncharted seas has been the story of Yaffe’s life so far. ‘Something that’s clear when I look back is that I’m not daunted. I say to myself, ‘I think I can do this, I think I can take this on,’ and just try.

‘You don’t set off in life to think you can do [some] things. But I do remember precisely the moment Peter Grant, who has been a colleague of mine for many years, on the night of Jan. 1, 1995 – when we turned the switch and started Showcase and actually became broadcasters – said to me, ‘My god Phyllis, you really did it.’

‘Getting the licence was hard enough, but [actually getting a channel on the air] in six months, which was all we really had – I’d never done anything like that before in my life. I remember him saying, ‘You got the right people, you got them to do the right thing, you managed to make it work, and there it is on air looking like a real television network.’ I remember that moment thinking, ‘My god, I really did do that, I can’t believe I did it.’ I didn’t know how to start a television channel.’

‘I realized [at that moment] that I had taken a big leap into a field that I really wanted to be in. It was the moment when I realized that I was actually good at running a specialty broadcaster.

‘I always had a lot of confidence that I could apply for the licence – which is a very political, very strategic process. I’d done lots of those kinds of things in my life before and I knew I’d be good at that. But I didn’t know, I had no inkling that I’d be good at running this kind of business.

This is the

beginning

And the future is likely to be no less interesting.

‘The next moment that really transformed my view of what I can do and what I want to do was when we brought together four channels under the Alliance Atlantis merger. [It] has given me the opportunity to realize it’s not a little business and it’s not an incrementally growing business; it’s a business that, with the vision and the resources that we have, can expand into a worldwide, very powerful force in the world of broadcasting…the opportunities are gigantic.

‘I think we are looking at exponential growth in what we’re doing here and in the industry in Canada. We’re going to see a sea change in broadcasting as we know it. Obviously it’s consolidating, that’s clear, but it’s also expanding with viewing opportunities for the consumers. I think we are extremely well positioned to take advantage of both of those things.

‘[aac] has a strength having merged, and we understand the business of building audiences around their interests, and that’s where television viewing seems to be going. I think we have the opportunity to take what we’ve learned and bring it to partners in other parts of the world, so I see this as almost the beginning.

‘What we will soon be able to do is deliver to the consumers that kind of air choice in terms of their viewing patterns – information, learning, entertainment – that will really suit their own tastes. I think [aac] will be able to take a leading role. We’re looking to the future for an opportunity to be at the helm of changing the way specialty television exists in this country and in many others.’

Yaffe is no stranger to unmapped futures. ‘In 1994, it was hard to explain [Showcase]. It was an odd concept and I remember the day we got the licence, everybody in the cable industry saying, ‘Oh god, they’ve licensed terrible channels.’ Now Showcase has established itself as a channel that has influenced the way people access independent film. We do focus groups all the time and people say, ‘[Showcase] lets us see movies we could never see before.’ And if that’s the way people think about the channel, then surely that’s changed the way people in Sudbury and Hamilton and Brandon have access to a window on the world. I think that’s a pretty important thing.

‘And I think that’s true in different ways of many channels that we’ve given people an opportunity to watch. That means we’ve changed in a substantial way the way people see the world. We didn’t realize it would work so well. It was like we turned on this tap; it was as if there had been a drought before and people were thirsty. That’s a pretty amazing moment when you realize that your vision of what the country could enjoy is there: that Canadians are interested in seeing more than the traditional fare on tv.

‘The range of choices there is what has given Canadians a new chance to say, ‘We’re not content with knowing the three or four things we know,’ and that makes Canada a better country.

‘I often think, ‘I’ll tell you what I want to see more of.’ How different am I to the total range of people in the country? I work, I have a family, I go home, I do what I have to do and I also watch tv at night. I imagine that’s what most Canadians do and I know I want more. I know I’m not satisfied with what’s on tv, so I’m assuming that my life is a Canadian life and that if I’m happy with the things I’m seeing, I’m pretty sure there are lots of Canadians that agree with me. It seems to be the case so far.’