[Radiounion]

A question, this TVOntario channel is sort of like the Canadian version of PBS?

Yep, but it is not a full-flown national broadcaster like PBS is. It is a provincial broadcaster whose remit is exclusively education- and public service-focused, and similar programming to PBS. It is owned by the Ontario Educational Communications Authority (BTW, the original name of the station), a Crown corporation directly owned by the province. Unlike CBC, which is funded by federal budgets and advertising, TVO fundings come from direct Government funding and charitable funding (like PBS).

Its model has been replicated by other broadcasters, including Knowledge Network in British Columbia, Télé-Quebec (though they air standard commercial breaks during non-educational programming, except feature films, with ads mostly paid for by funding companies), and sister corporation TFO, originally an off-shoot designed to cater the Ontario French community with separate programming in a separate channel (for many years, on Sundays, both channels switched their offering, with TVO airing TFO's output, and viceversa, but as TFO expanded its OTA footprint in the pre-cable era, this was discontinued by the 90s). By 2007, TVO spun off TFO into a separate Crown corporation in order to expand the scope of its operations and allow them more autonomy in decision-making.

Long story short, only in the sense of their remit. Not their reach.