CKJL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-04-21 published
Suzanne ROCHON-
BURNETT,
Broadcaster: (1935-2006)
Articulate, bilingual and passionate, she became the owner of
a commercial radio station -- the first aboriginal to do so in
Canada, writes Sandra
MARTIN. It turned out to be a powerhouse
enterprise
By Sandra MARTIN,
Page S9
Suzanne ROCHON-
BURNETT had more "firsts" in her life than most
people have fingers. The first aboriginal woman to own and operate
a commercial radio station and the first woman to be inducted
into the Canadian Aboriginal Business Hall of Fame, she had many
other achievements, including membership in the Orders of Ontario
and Canada and an honorary doctorate from Brock University.
Articulate, bilingual and female, she was an obvious candidate
for community and cultural boards in the postfeminist, multicultural,
postconstitutional Canada of the 1980s and 1990s. What mattered,
though, was what she brought to these privileged positions: passion,
experience, advocacy, business acumen and commercial success
as a broadcaster and the Chief Executive Officer of her own business.
Cultural advocate Nalini Stewart, who met her after both women
were appointed to the Canada Council in 1998, remembers Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT
quoting Métis leader Louis Riel at her first board meeting: "My
people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake,
it will be the artists who will fuel their spirits."
This statement, which Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT repeated frequently,
was like a mantra. "She was a very passionate advocate, but she
was not strident," said Ms. Stewart, who credits Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT
with pressing the council to hire more aboriginal arts officers.
"She was always educating us… and I felt very enriched by all
the things I learned from her."
"Suzanne was a grand lady who brought enormous pride to her people,"
said Tony BELCOURT, president of the Métis Nation of Ontario.
Having known her since 1972, he said she was like a sister to
him. "She met every challenge head-on, persevered and was successful
in everything she touched -- in business, in the arts, in communications,
public service and in life. She gave 110 per cent."
Suzanne ROCHON-
BURNETT was born in the Laurentians, north of
Montreal in the middle of the Depression, the only daughter and
middle child of Achille Joseph and Jeanne Marie
BURNETT (née
FILLION.)
She was proud of her Métis heritage, which she could
trace back through both sides of her family. She loved to tell
stories about how her grandmother made and sold hats to supplement
her income after she was widowed in her 40s, with 12 children
to raise and a farm to run. Her mother carried on the artisan
tradition by designing sweaters, hiring local women to knit them
and then selling the finished product to tourists. At 7, Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT
was hard at work as a courier, delivering wool to knitters and
picking up the finished pieces to take back to her mother to
assemble into sweaters.
Her parents sent her to boarding school at Pensionnat des Saint-Anges,
a convent in Saint_Jérome, Quebec, where the nuns rapped her knuckles
if she didn't attend to lessons or speak clearly in class. Decades
later, she told an interviewer that her parents had warned her
before she left home to keep her Indian blood a secret because
"it doesn't show." She believed her parents were trying to protect
her, but it left her "wondering what was wrong with it."
After the convent, she went to Proulx Business College to learn
typing and shorthand. The job choices in her community in the
1950s were few: "The bank, the Bell, or the mill." She wasn't
interested in the first two, so she applied for a job as a secretary,
but the mill owner rejected her, saying she was too talented.
According to Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT, he called her father and said,
"don't let her work in this small town. It will bury her." Instead,
the mill owner introduced Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT to the manager of
CKJL-AM (now
CJER-AM,) a radio station that had opened in Saint_Jerome
in 1952. The manager was so impressed with her diction and pronunciation
that he gave her a job.
Later, Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT credited her knuckle-rapping nuns for
getting her a start as a broadcaster. But it was her own drive,
journalistic talents and easy charm that won her a job as host,
producer and public relations director of the station when she
was 19, a position she held for six years. During this time,
she also repackaged some of her programs for other stations around
the province, took night classes in public relations and marketing
at McGill University, and began working as a freelance journalist
in print as well as broadcast.
With her striking colouring -- pale skin and chestnut hair and
dark eyes -- she also found work as a model, becoming "the face"
of the Montreal Royals baseball team and appearing in commercials
on television. She made the most of the hedonism of the 1960s
travelling around Europe working as a freelance print and
broadcast journalist, living for a time in Paris, where she was
said to have stayed in Edith Piaf's apartment and made Friends
with Jacques Brel, hooking up with Gypsies in Spain and acting
in commercials for NBC in New York.
Back in Canada, she converted a Laurentian lodge into a successful
art gallery. She sold the business after she met and married
Gordon BURNETT, owner of
CHOW-AM in Welland, Ontario, in 1967.
They soon had a baby daughter, Michèle-Elise
BURNETT.
The family
moved to St. Catharines, where Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT was a full-time
mother and volunteer for several years. One day, after dropping
her daughter at school, she was struck by the empty hours in
her days. "I'm 40 years old. I'm going to be 60 one day and I'm
going to turn around and say 'what have I done with my life,'
" she told Niagara magazine in May, 2005.
She came up with Chansons à la Française, a program idea that
she turned into a one-hour show on
CHOW that quickly expanded
into two, and then four hours. The Ontario Ministry of Culture
sponsored its distribution to more than 20 AM and FM radio stations
in the province. That led to frequent invitations to appear as
a commentator on francophone and Québécois talent on Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation Radio's Morningside, first when Harry
Brown was a host and then with Don Harron.
In the recession of the early 1990s, her husband's AM radio station
was gasping for survival. In 1995, she formed a company, R.B. Communications,
and bought her husband's firm Wellport Broadcasting Ltd., and
became the owner of a commercial radio station -- the first aboriginal
to do so in this country. She was 60 years old and her husband
was 75. Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT knew that having an FM frequency was
essential for the station's success and she also knew that there
was a licence for an FM frequency -- 97.1 -- available from the
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
"I looked at my mom and she looked at me and we said: 'Okay,
let's go for it,'" said her daughter Michèle-Elise
BURNETT, who
was then 28 and in the business, having studied radio and television
arts at Ryerson in Toronto. They won the licence in 1997, and
launched a new format country music station they called Spirit
91.7 F.M. "It was a powerhouse," said Ms.
BURNETT. "We became
the second-most powerful station in the market, and very competitive."
Beginning in the 1980s, Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT had begun sitting
on the boards of community native and arts and culture organizations,
including the Canadian Native foundation for the Arts,
TVOntario,
the Métis Nation of Ontario, the Canada Council for the Arts
and Brock University. At one time, she was working on six major
boards simultaneously.
About three years ago, Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT was having trouble
breathing. She was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis,
a progressive scarring of the lungs that makes it increasingly
difficult for them to transfer oxygen into the bloodstream. There
is no cure and treatment options are negligible. Ms.
ROCHON-
BURNETT
applied for a lung transplant, but she was an unsuitable candidate.
She sold the station in 2004, but continued her advocacy work.
About a year ago, she and her husband, who had led separate lives
for some time, separated. Their daughter said that the radio
station was the last thing her parents had in common. After it
was sold, they divorced.
Ms. ROCHON-
BURNETT made her last public appearance in February
when she was the first woman to be inducted into the Canadian
Council for Aboriginal Business Hall of Fame. Still beautiful,
her shoulder-length black hair still shiny, she made a joke about
her "leash." It was a reference to the portable oxygen tank held
by her 12-year-old grand_son, who had designed a backpack to make
it easier for her to carry it around. Always intuitive, she spoke
as though she were making a farewell speech, rather than accepting
an award. "When you start reliving your life, you realize you
don't really have any worries about dying because it is part
of life," she said. "I am here to let you know that my life was
good. It was full of challenges, but it was a great life." Referring
to the many boards on which she served, she was grateful that
"her dreams had become a reality" and that she had had the opportunity
to work with people who had "the same belief in aboriginal capacity
and power."
Suzanne ROCHON-
BURNETT was born on March 10, 1935, in Mont Rolland,
Quebec She died in Welland, Ontario, of a brain hemorrhage on
April 2, 2006. She was 71.
She is survived by her daughter Michéle-Elise
BURNETT and her
husband Bill
REICH and two grand_sons. She also leaves her former
husband, Gordon
BURNETT.
There will be a traditional ceremony
and celebration of her life on May 7 at 2 p.m. at the Pond Inlet
at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario
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