It’s unlikely anyone was clamouring for an exhaustive Peter Gzowski biography. In the 13 years since the CBC Radio mainstay stepped away from his most prominent perch as host of Morningside, and in the eight years since his death, Gzowski’s profile and fame, like that of many prominent and beloved broadcasters, has receded. Nevertheless, R.B. Fleming has taken on the task, though the result is not likely to win over many skeptics.

Fleming’s book exhaustively details Gzowski’s youth, his years as a print journalist experimenting with the emerging forms of “new journalism,” his various pre-Morningside CBC projects (most notably his late-night TV talk show, 90 Minutes Live), and his often dark and tumultuous personal and family life.

At times, the book gets tedious. Fleming provides an overly extensive account of articles Gzowski wrote for publications like Maclean’s and the Toronto Star. Fleming also repeatedly points out Gzowski’s tendency to embellish personal anecdotes, which results in a biographer constantly questioning his subject’s honesty.

On the plus side, one of the book’s strengths is its portrayal of the group of largely Toronto-based writers and broadcasters in whose circles Gzowski travelled and who helped shape Canadian pop culture. However, while Fleming repeatedly notes how popular Gzowski, and especially Morningside, was with a fairly diverse swath of Canadians, he has little to say about its lasting influence on the culture it sought to support or, for that matter, the cultural value of the show itself.

One of the side effects of Fleming’s biography is to bring into focus the changes that have taken place at CBC Radio and in Canadian culture in the past 15 years. In hindsight, maybe Gzowski’s frequent chats with W.O. Mitchell about life on the Prairies are as ephemeral and ultimately empty as e­Talk’s “exclusive” reports from the set of CTV’s latest generic police procedural. There’s a reason why all that’s left of the version of Canadian culture represented by the Gzowski-era CBC and fellow cultural nationalists is kitschy, overpriced T-shirts and bags targeted at people who can barely remember the pre-Ghomeshi CBC.