Now, I consider myself to be the sort of person who doesn’t make a connection with something just because it is from the same place I am. Just because a movie or television show or book or a band is made in, or by people from, Halifax, I don’t give things any extra credit for being from here. In fact, if someone is telling me about something and they bring up its local origins before convincing me of the thing’s quality on its own merit, I’m likely to hold it against the thing, telling myself that if it’s localness ranks so high in its importance, it must not have much else going for it. Unfair? Probably, but this is how I am (That is, always looking for something to complain about).

That said, I don’t think I can separate the Halifax Explosion Heritage Moment from my being born and raised in Halifax. I have no specific memory of when I first was taught about the Explosion, but there is a good chance this was the only Heritage Moment about an event I knew about before I saw it. In fact, it is one of the few that I can say with certainty I was taught anything about in school (Though, the Underground Railroad is another of those few. If I was ever taught anything about Irish immigrants to Quebec or the struggles of women trying to learn medicine, I don’t recall it. And I know for sure that the Canadian school system doesn’t teach enough about Superman.). So, as a child, it was neat to see this one.

It’s a simple story, Vince Coleman see that the ships are gonna blow, he warns everyone he sees to get as far away as possible, then he remembers a train is coming into town and he sends a Morse code message for them to maybe not come into town, on account of the explosion that’s gonna happen.

Someone sacrificing his or her own life to save others is always the sort of thing I like in a protagonist, so I’m behind Vince. I guess, in real life, some of the facts were not quite the same as depicted here, but the message he sent (“Hold up the train. Munitions ship on fire and making for Pier 6… Goodbye boys.”) does make it sound like he knew he was going out, but he still managed to keep his cool and get the message to the trains. So he’s a good guy, even if the commercial did kinda feel the need to fluff him up.

Still, historical accuracy has never been one of my criteria for these reviews. As an entity unto itself, the commercial tells its story quite well in the minute. We get the set up, the struggle to get the message out, the success, and the tragic end all at breakneck speed. As for quotability, I could see “C’mon Vince, C’mon” being the sort of thing I’d say if I knew a Vince (which would likely annoy Vince). But “C’mon, c’mon, acknowledge.” is the real star. If I’d been asked before re-watching, I would have been sure that line played a much bigger role. Anyway, we should all use it on computers when they’re taking too long to load and stuff.

So anyway, it’s entirely possible that there was a time in my youth when I would have called this my favorite Heritage Moment (with the possible exception of the Superman one), but that was just my regionalism. But still, I do like this one even looking at my new, bitter-about-everything eyes.

I would say that it is very likely I would have no idea what an inukshuk was if it wasn’t for this commercial. Maybe they told us in school one time, but I sure don’t remember it. This commercial on the other hand can not be forgotten. I’m pretty sure this commercial was designed by Canadologists to maximize its ability to bore into the minds of the public. And for this, I love this Heritage Moment.

What we’ve got here is a wounded RCMP officer and some Inuit people, right. They’re taking a break or something and the Inuit, as they are wont to do, start building an inukshuk. RCMP Johnny says to himself “I’ve always wondered what those things were about” and he goes to check it out. The woman doesn’t even need to be asked, though. She knows that people all the time be thinking about inukshuks, so as soon as he gets there she has another guy (her son maybe) translate the purpose of the thing: “Now the People will know we were here.”

And is our only great quotable line from this one. But it’s a great one. They even have to bring it back mere seconds later to close out the piece. It probably wasn’t written that way. I’m pretty sure it just had to happen that way because the line was so quotable. So while it only gives us one line, it’s so well done, I give big points for it. Of the Heritage Moments I’ve reviewed so far, only the Superman can honestly trump this one, because it has both quality and quantity.

But meanwhile, we’ve got the hidden non-educational bit of the story. What is the deal here? How did this RCMPoliceman get hurt? Just a simple slip and fall on an icy rock? Was he attacked by Americans trying to get to the Yukon? Did he sprain his ankle giving a roundhouse kick to the a wendigo? We don’t know. It raises questions and I, for one, would enjoy seeing the tale of these people (a family, probably) helping this guy get wherever they’re going. A television show really ought to have sprung from this.

For doing its job super well and giving us tantalizing hints at a story at the same time, this one gets Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.

When I was in New York last year, I saw an inukshuk on display at the United Nations building. I’m no nationalist, but that moment made me feel connected to Canada even more than finding a Tim Hortons in a pizza hut did.

It may seem hard to believe, but once upon a time there was something called black people. For a while black people were having a pretty rough time in America. White people there were pretty rude to them. It was so bad that some of them thought “Hey, we oughtta go to Canada! Things might be a bit better off there.” But some white people in America decided they’d rather the black people didn’t leave, so the black people had to do it secretively.

This particular “Canada Sure Is Great” Commercial plays up how some black people actually preferred Canada over a country where they were slaves! Wow! If that’s not impressive, what is? Okay, sure, if you want to be technical (and I never do), it isn’t about how they liked Canada better, it’s about how Canada offered them their freedom and some Canadians actually worked to help them get there, and even I have to admit, that is the sort of thing that should be celebrated, I guess.

As for the actual plot, this one is about Liza, a recent smugglee into Canada, who is worried that her father is running late and she pessimistically assumes he has been captured even as her brother offers hard scientific rebuttals like “He’s our Pa, he’ll be here!” Anyway, just as Liza gets so fed up that she apparently plans to run into America and kick Every Ass until she finds her Pa, he turns up, hidden in a church pew or something, none the worse for wear and everybody is happy! A pretty simplistic story, meant more to show the emotional turmoil of the fleeing slaves, rather than give any specific historic details.

A few minor things: I love how Liza is out the door before the White Lady even seems to realize she’s run off. It’s like “No more prayin’!” *Liza runs away* *Three Full Seconds Pass* “Liza!” and I love it. Liza’s brother and the way he nervously plays with his hat for basically the whole commercial, meanwhile, is really endearing to me. Finally (and most inanely), there’s something about the way Pa crawls out of his hiding place that seems awkward to me. I can’t really explain it, I don’t think. It just looks uncomfortable the way he’s using his lower arm to pull himself out instead of exiting upper arm first, coming almost face down, and then he can push himself into a standing position. I mean, I’ve never spent a long period of time in a hollowed out pew that I can remember, so I don’t know how I’d actually behave in the situation (and I guess he needs to be in that position to see Liza first), but it just doesn’t look right to me. Clearly this is such a bizarre and trivial comment, I’ve not let it affect my final scoring at all.

This one isn’t great for fun quotes. Shouting “Pa ain’t gonna make it!” could, with some effort, be used for fun, but there’s nothing that sticks in the brain and begs to be spouted incessantly. I can only give out Three And A Half out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake for this one, I think. In related news, I will probably never be able to hear the term “Underground Railroad” without my mind first visualizing a literal railway system hidden in tunnels from the States to Canada. Little Me made his mind up that that is what it was, and my mind just won’t let it go.

Canada hates the Illiterates. Canada has been at war with the people of Illitria for decades and shows no sign of slowing its genocidal rage. Or something. Whatever.

Anyway, this time we’ve got a confrontation between this one teacher and the school trustees who don’t like how she is teaching the kids to read. This one guy is really upset, so the teacher asks him to read something (“It is from the Bible.”) that his kid had read. But the guy is shamed into admitting he can’t read. One of his fellow trustees is just gleefully pleased about it too. “Why don’t you just READ it then?” he says, just totally sarcasming his ass off. We never really get to see what happens next, because they all turn into a painting, but if they hadn’t I guess we’re expected to assume that he was shown his place and learned to respect the opinions of others who know more about the subject at hand than he does. The other possibility is that he was so embarrassed that he ended up lashing out at everyone in a hateful, and possibly violent, outburst.

For that matter, we’re never told what the teaching methods the trustees had a problem with either. For all I know, that teacher could be a horrible one and the trustees could have been fully justified. “If they read a word incorrectly, I stab their hands so they associate it with pain. When the read a word correctly, I administer the cocaine!” We don’t know. This commercial could be a tragedy.

Four and a Half out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. This Heritage Minute does feel pretty iconic as far as my opinion of the Heritage Minutes is concerned. “Both of you know I cannot read a word” is a good quotable line, though I can’t think of a million places to use it in everyday life. Unless two people are asking you to read something I guess…

Today we have a boat that gets swarmed by an army of killer fish and the seafaring humans must defend themselves… by eating those same delicious fish. Or something like that. Maybe it’s closer to “They realize there’s a lot of fish around and that will make it easier to find lunch” but I’m still pretty sure that the swarm of fish is, in fact, attacking. Either way, it ends with one of the dudes reporting back to Royal McFancypants that “We got lots of fish.”

I can give this one no more than Two and a Half Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. While I can (and often do) quote the “Oh Sire, until the end of time!” line, that is pretty much it. Apart from that, this one is actually much less eventful than I remember. With the swelling music and the dramatic angles, I suppose they were trying their best to work with a pretty limited story here, but being a well-made commercial isn’t what I like these things for. Between this and the Maple sugar one, I guess any time that the commercial ends with a report back to a monarch, I can assume the plot of the piece is just not strong enough to stand on its own.

Some things of note: The look on the king’s face as some guy pointlessly shows him a map in the middle of the sailor guy’s report (surely they would have already known the area the guy was discussing. Or did that guy just barge in and start talking without explaining himself?), and I certainly can’t blame the sailor guy for being wrong about the infinite number of cod that, as far as I know, still haven’t recovered from our overfishing. But I can blame all of you for eating all those fish. I don’t eat seafood, so it wasn’t my fault. It was all of you.

Final thought: Someone on that boat likes the sound of his voice too much. He yells “Captain! Over here! You must see this!” even though one guy had clearly gone specifically to get the captain already. And then the “Heave-ho”-ing when they pull up the bucket. It’s one small bucket of fish. Save the heave-hos until you have something heavy, guy.