Crow character causes concern

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Award-winning actress, Cathy Jones, one-quarter of the comedy team that makes up CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes, has created many memorable characters throughout her career, but one of them has caused some concern with at least one viewer.

The half-hour show is a satire of current Canadian events framed within a fictional television news magazine show. One of the characters that Jones portrays is Joe Crow, a Native man, who appears at the end of some episodes. Crow talks with an "Native" accent and presents his point of view on some political events that usually involve Canada's Native people.

Garry Wright, from White Rock, B.C., sent a letter to Windspeaker decrying the "rambling, feeble minded, and racist monologue" of Joe Crow. He then went on to write that viewers should phone their CBC stations to complain about the character.

The audience relations office at the CBC headquarters in Toronto which handles viewer complaints said that they hadn't received any complaints about the Joe Crow character.

Tamara McKeegan, a publicist for CBC, was quite surprised that someone would find the Joe Crow character offensive in any way.

Native playwright and humorist Drew Hayden Taylor didn't think Joe Crow was feeble minded.

"Because This Hour. .. is a satirical show, they have a certain leeway in terms of interpretation of character. If Joe Crow is racist, then so is their portrayal of [Quebec Premier] Lucien Bouchard, and the [Newfoundland] Quints," he said. "The concept of satirizing something gives you some room to express the ludicrousness of a character.

"As a Native humorist, I am willing to allow them a certain leeway in their satire, because that is the focus of the show - to take segments of Canadian society and blow them completely out of proportion," continued Taylor.

Jones is "taking a Native slant on Canadian society. She's not so much talking about the Native community, but using it as a telescope to look upon the white community."

He did warn, however, that Native people still have to be mindful of how they're portrayed in the media.

Despite repeated attempts by Windspeaker, neither Jones nor representatives of Salter Street Studios, which produces This Hour has 22 Minutes, made themselves available for comment.