On Nov. 2, 1936, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was founded. For 16 years, nothing much happened. Then suddenly, someone had an interesting, creative idea.

He was immediately fired.

A few days later, someone else had the same creative idea.

She was immediately given early retirement.

But the good idea kept coming, so management formed a multi-platform task force to study it, eventually announcing that CBC Radio would reposition itself as a television network.

This was followed by angry letters to the editor, outraged phone calls from cabinet ministers, a change of CBC president, and another task force.

Great minds decided that since America had commercial television, and Britain had the public BBC, then Canada should create a compromise: a publicly supported, non-profit Crown corporation, but chronically underfunded so it would also have to carry commercials.

And in September 1952, CBC Television signed on in Montreal and Toronto. Canadian television had arrived, and CBC executives celebrated by rearranging the program schedule and pre-empting Coronation Street – an act of amazing prescience, since Coronation Street wasn’t even on the air yet. Traditions began that would last for 50 years.

Canada’s newspapers quickly fired their radio critics and promoted copy boys to television critics. They came up with new names for CBC: ‘Convoluted Budget Corporation’ and ‘Chaotic But Canuck.’

Growing up in Montreal in the 1950s, we were too far from Plattsburgh, NY and Burlington, VT to pick up NBC or CBS. CTV wasn’t yet a gleam in the Bassett and Eaton eyes. So for us, CBC Television was it.

And what an ‘it’ it was. We rushed home from school for Howdy Doody time – our Howdy Doody, with Timber Tom, not Buffalo Bob. We watched the dramas, where great writing and performing made us barely notice the occasional boom microphones in the shot. We waited for our favorite hits on Cross Canada Hit Parade, never commenting on Wally Koster’s toupee.

We became the first television generation, growing up in the frequent flicker of a CBC slide of a patchy fisherman’s net, and the words ‘network trouble is temporary.’

In the sixties, CTV came along, then cable opened our eyes to the U.S. networks. We now had a massive choice – five different channels to watch!

But we were hooked on CBC, and still are. CBC Television is 50, and apparently so are we. Our childhood companion is now our home network, and somewhere in Canada, we know that there are young kids watching and absorbing Air Farce and 22 Minutes and David Suzuki and Hana Gartner and Ron McLean and Wendy Mesley. And these kids don’t know it yet, but they’re hooked on CBC, too. Hooked on watching their own Canadian reflection, recognizing themselves in the stories we tell. We hope that one day, they’ll enjoy the thrill of being part of CBC – maybe with a primetime platform to make fun of our country’s most respected institutions. Including, of course, CBC.

Happy golden anniversary, CBC. Thanks for keeping us Canadian, then and now. Fifty is a very nice place to be, poised between a great past and a great future.