Remembering Canada's TV Heritage Minutes

You already know what it is. via.

My roommate is Japanese, which means her slippers magically clean whatever surface they touch, she draws faces on everything, and her quirky behavior—that would normally be unbearably annoying—is adorable. Unfortunately, her visa is only good for one year, and as it approaches the expiry date she's been casually looking at what it takes to become an official Canadian citizen. I told her she'll need to learn how to make a ceasar, and be subject to a citizenship test that only the most patriotic gun denouncing Canadians could ever pass (do you know how many Canadians have been awarded the Victoria Cross?). Luckily if anyone ever needs to brush up with a whirlwind history lesson, they can learn the same way I did, with the Heritage Minutes series. But upon revisiting these fossils with her, it became alarmingly apparent why I'm better at phony accents than reciting any factual knowledge.

These features have been circulating on TV since 1991 and attempt to squeeze Canada's most brag-worthy moments into the time it takes to eat a Triscuit. While they were well intentioned as quick, digestible snippets of national awareness, their educational merit can be questionable—and shitty acting, misconstrued plots and laughable scripts have made them as infamous as the “some people say I eat too many chocolate bars” guy within the limited scope of Canada’s television history. They often don't make sense within their micro time constraints, and at other times they really blow it with stereotypes—but even if they fail to educate, at least they're always hilarious. Perhaps learning how to laugh at one’s self is the valuable lesson they were trying to teach all along, but here's what else I learned while re-watching the beloved series recently.

"Kanada"

We don't learn from our mistakes, we just name an entire nation after them. If I was the stubborn Jesuit interpreter, I would’ve taken full advantage of this situation and convinced my company—through a manipulative, false translation—that the chief was actually saying I deserved a double portion of rations that night. I'm guessing after this encounter they all headed to the village or “Kanada,” where first and last month’s rent were paid, references checked and the country’s lease signed over. Yeah. Our country is named after a misinterpretation, but so what, naming stuff is hard! At least they were nice enough to let us keep the name without having to put an underscore or 01 at the end of it. But the best part of this spot is how everyone blatantly ignores the poor know it all wiener who suggests they might be mistaken—he's probably the same buzz kill who told Columbus they weren’t in India.

The Halifax Explosion

If you’re able to go into this one spoiler free, you will really have a blast! In this clip, we’re introduced to Vince Coleman, train dispatcher, who discovers that the flaming ship in the harbour is also carrying explosives. He frantically takes to the streets, where indifferent citizens barely look up from there donairs long enough to notice what he's yapping about. The tension reaches a climax when Vince sends a desperate last minute telegraph to warn incoming trains, and just as all hope seems lost, a reply comes! I just feel bad that they lead on the audience to think he'll make it, as anyone familiar with this catastrophe knows that old Vince doesn’t get a break and died that day—OR is stuck in an infinity loop where he lives forever within the heritage minute, perpetually trying to prevent the inevitable explosion. So what was that last telegraph he received? Just the voice of Alan Rickman saying “Boom”? Actually, Vince's efforts did prevent multiples trains from continuing towards Halifax, but of course, I learned that elsewhere.

Chinese Railway Workers

Things are so damn expensive these days. Remember when it only cost a couple of coins to turn Chinese people into human bomb detonators that built our railroads at the same damn time? I'm not suggesting we shouldn’t acknowledge our nation’s shamefully exploitative past, but this Minute definitely could've been handled with a little more tact. I mean, even hiring an actor who didn’t have to poorly imitate being ESL and recite lines you'd normally hear drunk dickheads impersonating at late night Chinese food spots would’ve made a difference. It's important that these people’s sacrifices are remembered, but this portrayal feels just as insensitive as this horrible blight on our country’s history being commemorated in the first place. If only Cockrain had disobeyed his orders to get another volunteer, and realized that this kid is obviously some sort of nitro glycerin proof chosen one, who channels explosions into new hairdos. He could've paid for more wives than he could handle.

The Soddie

In the 1890s a wave of immigrants came to Canada from Europe, and had it way harder than you ever will. Have you tried hoeing a field in slow motion? Have you ever had to endure the unbearable silence every night when your wife insists her mulch soup is good? Nope! You haven’t. And yet the ambitious, unflinching spirit of these immigrant folk persevered. They even managed to take a break from work to smile at the camera from time to time, but that still doesn’t address the issue of WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BABY? Seriously, is there a scene missing where he's taken by the others or is this also meant to teach us about prairie miscarriages? I've watched this several times now and still can't decipher what racy eastern European innuendos they exchange just before the voiceover chimes in to inform us that a soddie is a house built from earth. Really? I always thought a soddie was when someone did a really wet fart in your face while you were sleeping.

Paul Emile Borduas

Fitting that they went with a more abstract direction for this clip about an abstract artist, but it plays out like a weird stage production of Heritage Minutes that could've been put on by your high school drama faculty. Paul's manifesto Refus Global, advocated for the separation of church and state in Quebec and is heralded as being a major influence on the Quiet Revolution (there is a question about the Quiet Revolution on the citizenship test FYI). However, that isn’t exactly made clear here, and with no trace of context, he comes off as an insane recluse shacked up in a junkie flophouse. You can almost smell the Saint Hubert take-out boxes left neglected on the his coffee table. This particular Minute gets special recognition for being the creepiest one ever produced—just listen to that eerie music, it’s the perfect soundtrack for when your hostage is exhaustively begging “Why are you doing this to me?” and you just stare at them silently in your turtle neck while sucking on pickled eggs. I was really confused by this one when I was younger, and still am—what the hell do you want from me Borduas?

Burnt Toast

Wilder Penfield's research forever changed the field of neuroscience and the way we say burnt toast—even as I type this, I can hear her funny accent in my Canadianized skull. What a relief this revelation must of been for her husband, who no longer had to defend his toast-making competence in what can only be described as one of the strongest examples of “it’s not me, it’s you.” In addition to actually doing a decent job of conveying a momentous historical breakthrough (remember, that's why these things were made!), this also provides an excellent example of Canada’s great sense of humour. Even in the operating room, we’re not afraid to have a bit of fun—and if you watch very closely, you'll see all the nurses twitch a smile when Dr. Penfield makes his patient think her hand is in a cup of water so she'll pee her pants. This could even have been the first ever Just for Laughs Gag's segment, so it's no surprise they called him the greatest Canadian alive.

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