“We don’t intend to be one of the corpses lying beside the information highway,” says Israel Asper, chairman of Canwest Global.”

The CBC archives captured what family head Izzy Asper said as the Aspers helped themselves to a vast plateful of Canadian journalism just after the takeover, back when media concentration (and American sub-prime mortgages and financial derivatives) were in vogue. Back when, as CBC noted, “Publishers argue that if Canada doesn’t get on board it will get left behind in the new global economy.”

Some of us — me included — thought that was hubris at the time. Wish I could say it’s nice to be right. It’s not. There’s been too much damage, and not just to quality journalism.