Canadiana is a
documentary web series about
Canadian history. The first video in the series premiered on the Canadiana YouTube channel on August 14, 2017. Episodes are hosted and feature on-location footage, cut-out archival animations and visual effects.
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In January 2018 the
Bell Fund announced it would fund Canadiana's second season.
[3] Following the success of season 2, which included a Canadian Screen Award nomination, a third season received a green light for production in late 2020.
[4] Season 3, episode 1 premiered on June 28, 2022 on the Canadiana YouTube channel.
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Reception
In 2019, the series won a
Golden Sheaf Award for Best Research from
Yorkton Film Festival and a
Canadian Cinema Editors Award for Best Editing in a Web Based Series.
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Canadiana was nominated for a
Canadian Screen Award for Best Web Program or Series, Non-Fiction, by the
Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television in 2020.
[8] In 2023, the series was nominated for a Rockie Award from
Banff World Media Festival in the Short Form Non-Fiction category.
[9]
Of its third season, POV Magazine called Canadiana an "exploration of the oft-overlooked history of Canada [that] gives the nation's past the colour it deserves."
[10] As of March 2023, season 3 has received media attention from CBC's
Metro Morning,
CBC Radio One,
CTV News Channel,
CFRB,
Global News Morning, and more.
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Canadiana was previously featured on
Breakfast Television,
Global News,
Newstalk 1010 and
Elmnt FM, and has received praise by
blogs and
podcasts for its approach to Canadian history.
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[18] Canadiana has been selected to screen at T.O. Webfest, NYC Web Fest, Miami Web Fest, Hollyweb Festival, Stareable Fest L.A., Sicily Web Fest, The
National Screen Institute's NSI Online Short Film Festival, and
Yorkton Film Festival.
[19] The series also took home the IWCC Canadian Story Spotlight Award at T.O. WebFest in 2019.
[20]
Episodes
Season 1
- 101 – The Bizarre History of O Canada: The story of Canada's national anthem, from the 1600s to the 1980s. Composed by
Calixa Lavallee and Sir Adolphe-Basile-Routhier, the song was originally linked to
Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day and, as a result, it became deeply embedded in the turbulent history of
Quebec before it was ever considered to represent the rest of the country. The documentary focuses attention on a riot that took place on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in 1968, where a crowd of protestors pelted
Pierre Elliot Trudeau with rocks and bottles, to find out what the event has to do with
O Canada.
- 102 – The Mystery of Meech Lake: The story of
Thomas ‘Carbide’ Willson, a secretive scientist who changed the world with his inventions. The episode focuses on the ruins of Willson's laboratory, tucked away on the shore of famed
Meech Lake, and gives a brief biography of the man.
- 103 – The Battle of Nepean Point: The story behind a suspiciously empty
plinth at the base of
Ottawa’s most prominent statue. The episode covers the relocation of the
Indigenous ‘Scout’ that used to sit below
Samuel de Champlain on
Nepean Point, highlighting the controversy behind the decision and the history of the monument.
- 104 – The Exiled Princess of Ottawa: The story behind Ottawa's annual tulip festival. The episode covers the tale of Princess Juliana's escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands during the Second World War, her stay in Ottawa, and the birth of her daughter, Princess Margriet, in a Canadian hospital.
- 105 – A Canadian Slavery Story: The story of
Marie-Josèphe-Angélique, an enslaved woman in 1700s
Montreal, and the history of
slavery in Canada. The episode covers Angélique's daring escape attempts, as well as the famous fire of 1734 for which she was blamed and put on trial.
- 106 – The Love Triangle That Brought Down Québec: The story of an infamous trio of
New France aristocrats whose underhanded dealings and corruption undermined an already weakened colony at the time of the
Seven Years' War. The episode springs from a remnant of the fall of Québec, a disarmed bomb that sits along the famous Rue St. Louis in
Quebec City.
- 107 – The "Midgets Palace" of Montreal: The story of Phillipe and Rose Nicol, which follows their journey from victims of exploitation to champions of the marginalized. The episode focuses on Phillipe, a man with
dwarfism, and his transformation from ‘sideshow freak’ at
Barnum and Bailey Circus to purveyor of the ‘Midgets Palace,’ a part-exhibit, part-hotel for little people in
Montreal.
Season 2
- 201 – The King of Queen's Park: The story behind one of the most prominent statues in
Toronto’s Queen's Park, that of
King Edward VII riding a horse. The episode unearths the strange and circuitous route the statue took to get from
post-colonial India all the way to hippy-era Toronto in the 1960s.
- 202 – Camp 30: A Prisoner's Paradise: The story of a prisoner of war camp nestled in rural
Bowmanville, Ontario. The episode describes the luxuries afforded to German soldiers who were shipped to
Camp 30 from Europe, and an eventual rebellion within the camp's mess hall.
- 203 – Sudbury and the Mysteries of the Universe: The story of
Sudbury’s rise to
nickel capital of the world, and the cosmic origins that afforded it. The episode begins over 1.8 billion years ago when a
comet struck the area, and ends in the modern day, two kilometres beneath the Earth's surface, in a mine where cutting-edge scientific experiments are at the forefront of the search for
dark matter.
- 204 – The Forbidden City: The story of Canada's first
Chinatown and what it has to do with the country's first ‘war on drugs,’ focused on the infamous
Fan Tan Alley. The episode delves into the origins of the
Chinese Canadian experience, discussing the hardships Chinese immigrants faced as well as their perseverance, represented by a series of ornate arches built in
Victoria’s Chinatown.
- 205 – The Invincible Martha Black: The story of
Martha Black, a trailblazer who climbed the world renown
Chilkoot Pass to reach the
Yukon during the
Klondike Gold Rush. The episode follows Martha Black's voyage to
Dawson City, highlighting moments from her life and scenes from the chaotic world of the gold rush.
- 206 – The Hidden Story Behind Vancouver's Twin Peaks: The story of the Lions mountains in
North Vancouver and how colonizers changed their name from The Sisters in the late 1800s. The episode follows Chief
Joe Capilano, his wife Mary, and the famed poet
Pauline Johnson as they tried to keep the
Indigenous legends of Vancouver alive in the face of erasure and adversity.
- 207 – The Assassination of D’Arcy McGee: The story of Canada's greatest murder mystery; the assassination of
D’Arcy McGee, a
Father of Confederation, on his way home from parliament in Ottawa. The episode depicts the night of the crime, the manhunt that took place afterward, and the infamous trial of
Patrick James Whelan.
- 208 – Winnipeg's Secret Code: The story of the history of Winnipeg, capital of the Canadian province of
Manitoba, told through an exploration of the
Manitoba Legislative Building and trials of its construction in the early 1900s.
Season 3
- 301 – The Pirate Legends of Canada (Part 1): The story of the pirates that plagued the colonies along what is now Canada's Atlantic Coast — including
Peter Easton and Black Bart Roberts (
Bartholomew Roberts). The episode covers the conditions that set the stage for pirates to run rampant in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence and North Atlantic, namely, the
cod
fishing industry which boomed in the 1600s. Figures like
John Guy, the governor of the first English colony in
Newfoundland (
Cupids), and Queen
Elizabeth I figure prominently in a tale that starts with buried treasure on
Île Haute, and ends at the height of the
Golden Age of Piracy.
- 302 – The Pirate Legends of Canada (Part 2): Picking up where episode one left off, the second episode chronicles the decline of
piracy in Canada, the rise of the
privateer, and features notorious pirate
Edward Low.
- 303 – The
Toronto Forest that Brought Down
Napoleon / La forêt qui a vaincu Napoléon: Released in both English and French, this minisode tells the history behind
Rouge National Urban Park in
Ontario, Canada. The story covers the history of the
lumberjack and the role of Canadian
lumber in
naval warfare against
Napoleon.
- 304 – How the Cold War Started...in Ottawa: The story of Russian
cipher clerk
Igor Gouzenko, who
defected in
Ottawa in 1945, exposing
soviet intelligence's efforts to steal nuclear secrets. The act was credited as a triggering event of the
Cold War.
- 305 – The Werewolf of Quebec / Le loup-garou de Québec: Released in both English and French, this minisode features the
Fortifications of Quebec
National Historic Site in
Quebec City, Canada, and tells of a time in 1766 when a
werewolf siting was reported on several occasions in the Gazette de Quebec. The video also covers
French Canadian
folklore and similar published accounts of the
Beast of Gévaudan in
France.
- 306 – When Americans Built a Road Across Canada: The episode chronicles the construction of the
Alaska Highway — a massive road built through challenging Canadian terrain over a relatively short period of time during
World War II.
- 307 – The Extraordinary Adventures of the Newfoundland Dog: The story of the
Newfoundland dogs that helped shape
Canada, including hero dogs that traveled with
John Graves Simcoe,
Alexander Mackenzie, and
David Thompson, the legend of the dog that saved the passengers on board the shipwreck of the SS Ethie, and
Gander (dog), who was posthumously awarded a medal for bravery after
World War II.
- 308 – How the American Civil War Made Canada: A Canadian perspective on the
American Civil War that highlights some of the Canadians who played a role in the
Underground Railroad and
Union Army. The episode examines historical tension between Canada and the United States prior to
Canadian Confederation, including the
War of 1812 and
American Revolution, and looks at some Canadian defence strategies including the use of
Martello towers and the
SS Great Eastern.
- 309 - The Great Whale Robbery of Labrador: The history of
Red Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador as a centre of commercial
whaling in the
16th Century. The episode chronicles the arrival of
Basque
whalers in
Labrador to hunt for
bowhead whales in the
Strait of Belle Isle during the
1500s. It also tells the story of a
Spanish Supreme Court case that resulted from an alleged whale theft.
- 310 - The Engineering Marvel Built to Defend Against Americans — The Grisly History of the Rideau Canal: The history of the
Rideau Canal, a popular tourist attraction in
Ottawa and marvel of human
engineering from the early
1800s. The episode tells the story of how the
canal was originally built as a
national defence strategy for
Canada (pre-Confederation).
References
External links