Everyone Says No: Public Service Broadcasting and the Failure of Translation

Quebec has never signed on to Canada's constitution. After both major attempts to win Quebec's approval - the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords - failed, Quebec came within a fraction of a percentage point of voting for independence. Everyone Says No examines how the failure of these accords was depicted in French and English media and the ways in which journalists' reporting failed to translate the differences between Quebec and the rest of Canada. Focusing on the English- and French-language networks of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Kyle Conway draws on the CBC/Radio Canada's rich print and video archive as well as journalists' accounts of their reporting to revisit the story of the accords and the furore they stirred in both French and English Canada. He shows that the CBC/Radio Canada's attempts to translate language and culture and encourage understanding among Canadians confirmed viewers' pre-existing assumptions rather than challenging them. The first book to examine translation in Canadian news, Everyone Says No also provides insight into Canada's constitutional history and the challenges faced by contemporary public service broadcasters in increasingly multilingual and multicultural communities.