CBC Creator Program -- Paraskeva Clark Video

In December 2025, I was invited to join the CBC Creator Program team as a freelance researcher and copyeditor. Tiffany Wice, the associate producer for the Creator Program, was seeking a skilled researcher that could assistant with fact-checking and visual research. We had just recently worked together on the Skylight Caper video with YouTube content creator Christeah and Tiff was impressed with my abilities. I was shortly after brought on to the Paraskeva Clark video.

Petroushka by Paraskeva Clark. In the National Gallery of Canada's collection.

Toronto Daily Star, June 1 1937. The article "Five Steel Workers Killed in Clash with Chicago Police" was taped to the back of Petroushka.

The script for the Paraskeva Clark video was mostly already done when I joined in late December. The video was written by YouTube content creator Shawn Grenier, AKA The Canvas. One of my first tasks was hunting down an article from the Toronto Daily Star, dated Tuesday June 1, 1937. The script had mentioned that Paraskeva Clark had taped it to the back of her painting Petroushka but comments indicated that previous attempts to find a copy of the article had been fruitless. Within 30 minutes of starting on the script, I had found a PDF of the article. Finding this article so quickly is a personal highlight of the project as it plays a significant role in the video's story.

​The clip below shows how it was used. The documentary used throughout the video, Portrait of the Artist -- As An Old Lady, was also material I had uncovered and acquired via a DVD at the Toronto Public Library. 

As part of my research for this video to find additional sources, I visited both the Art Gallery of Ontario's library and the Toronto Reference Library. Since Clark was a resident of Toronto, both of these institutions were incredibly useful. In visiting these sites, I was able to share materials that were not available online, including an interview with Clark from 1960. Another article was sought, but it could not be tracked down as both of the microfilm reels that would have contained it at the Toronto Reference Library had been misplaced. This research allowed me to fact-check the script and provide additional sources that went beyond the scope of the video. I was able to uncover some of the obscure articles referenced in the script on databases like the Internet Archives. One of these, written by artist Elizabeth Wyn Wood, was featured in the video. 

Many more visual materials were sourced from various databases online. A number of pictures of Clark and her first husband, for example, came from Library and Archives Canada. I searched many more databases for other materials that did not make it into the video.