The Greene scene

Actor Graham Greene is being recognized by the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards for lifetime artistic achievement and will receive the award at a gala on June 14 in Ottawa.

In November 1990, Greene and fellow actor Tantoo Cardinal spoke with the CBC's Valerie Pringle about their parts in the movie Dances With Wolves, which later earned Greene an Oscar nomination. The actor said he had to learn two skills for the role: delivering his lines in Lakota and riding a horse bareback.

"I could ride before, but that was with a saddle," he told Pringle. "But when they take the saddle away and throw you up on this horse and go, 'OK, well now, just gallop across that field and shoot an arrow,' — that was hard work."

Trouble at the Bay

On June 1, Hudson's Bay Co. "closed its remaining 96 Bay and Saks-branded stores to the public," CBC News said last week. Two days later, a court approved the sale of the Bay's intellectual property to Canadian Tire for $30 million.

CBC's The National created a graphic of dollar bills flying out of a hole in a Bay-branded shopping bag to introduce a 1985 report on trouble at the company. Reporter Larry Stout said it had lost $300 million in the previous three years.

"The Bay is real estate, oil and natural gas, cigarettes and booze," he said. "But to most of us, it's a department store — a store that's in trouble." But there was a "bright note," he added. "The company's junior department store, Zellers, is apparently making a profit."

Nothing to celebrate

June 21 is "a day of celebration that honours the heritage, resilience, and contributions of Indigenous People across Turtle Island," according to CBC Communications. It was called National Aboriginal Day upon its founding in 1996 and renamed National Indigenous Peoples Day in 2017. 

When the first National Aboriginal Day was observed in 1996, CBC's The National aired a news report from Ottawa. There was a first ministers' meeting there that day and, according to reporter Julie Van Dusen, Indigenous leaders rcepted some of the premiers on their way in to advocate for a seat at the table. 

Rosemarie Kuptana of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (now Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami), said the topics on the agenda affected Indigenous people directly: "jobs, the economy — the very things that people in the Inuit and the Native community are concerned about."