The Canadian Experience

Eighty years ago when men went to sea in wooden ships, she was the Queen of the North Atlantic. A working schooner with the heart of a racer. The Bluenose was the fastest deep-water fishing schooner ever to sail the Grand Banks. For nearly 2 decades she dominated the International Fishermen’s Trophy races, defeating a string of challengers from Canada and the United States.

Why do English-speaking Canadians talk the way we do? Why do we say couch instead of chesterfield, windshield instead of windscreen, and ee-ther and eye-ther, sometimes interchangeably? Why do Newfoundlanders have a distinctive accent and use colourful words like ballicatter that can’t be heard anywhere else? How have French words like portage and prairie, and Native words like chipmunk and toboggan become part of our everyday speech? How have immigrants who are not from the British Isles had an impact on the way we speak?

This is the story of how Canada and the Underground Railroad became the focal point of the anti-slavery movement in the tumultuous decade leading up to the American Civil War.

Robert Flaherty was the very first to bring us a film based on the idea that reality could be as gripping as fiction. After years as an explorer in Canada’s North, and funded by a fur trading company, he undertook the mission of chronicling the life of an Inuit hunter near Port Harrison, on the eastern shore of Hudson’s Bay. The story of how he did it, and his adventures in one of the most inhospitable landscapes on earth, is one of courage, adversity, but most of all, one of friendship.

The bright shining sixties’ version of the future came to Canada in 1967, the country’s one-hundredth birthday--a time when everything seemed possible. The Canadian Experience explores the exhilarating experience of Expo 67, which had a lasting personal impact on a generation of Canadians, and launched Canada as an enthusiastic participant in the global village.

The story of pioneer writers Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill is one of ambition, passion, staggering hardship and remarkable success. It is the ultimate “Survivor” story.