This one is interesting. We’ve got dapper John Matheson standing in a dark void, struggling over how to convince Canada to agree on a flag. That is pretty much the entirety of the thing. His speech in the void. We’re told, in the end, that Canada does eventually agree, but that is just an afterthought. And it is weird, if you think about it too much. Which is exactly what I do.

At first we could suppose that he’s just having a soliloquy in the Flag Committee Room, but it isn’t so. John is talking to someone in that void. It’s possible that he is talking to us, via a breaking of the fourth wall, but he says when the other politicians walk in “I was just talking about you” and I doubt he’d have said that if he was talking to himself. This indicates that either his special awareness of the medium is already common knowledge, or there actually is someone in the void with him. In either case, he then demonstrates another magic ability: Whichever flag he is thinking of forms from the ether just by saying “this” and making a simple gesture of his head for the benefit of the person he was speaking with. What I’m saying is John Matheson was probably a wizard. In real life.

Also, he’s doing an awful lot of walking around in the void. Just saying.

Anyway, to business. I have made a big deal about the ability to quote them being the biggest factor in my liking of a Heritage Moment, but this one kinda goes against the grain. A few lines are pretty good (“But blue is not an official Canadian color*” and “Prime minister AND Mr. Diefenbaker…”), but really they don’t stand alone as well as examples from, say, the Superman minute. Does this work against this one? I’m going to go with “no”. You know why? Because this whole monologue is so strong that if I had the mental capacity, I would commit this whole commercial to memory and quote it in its entirety whenever I felt like it. And that would be sweet.

Apart from quotability, I have to say that looking at all the Alternate Earth Canada Flags is kinda fun. I bet this was one of the cheapest and easiest Heritage Minutes to make, but it does not suffer for it. And looking back at this from my present times, I can add that the “I wonder, I wonder” also reminds me of the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which is another plus for this Canada History Commercial. I am fully willing to give this one Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System cake. It’s simple, magical, and I like it.

*And yes, I’m still gonna spell “color” the way I prefer even though the speaker would have spelled it another way. This is how the Nation of PDR rolls.

Oh, man! Here we go. This one starts with grown men doing science with kites (Kites were so useful to Old Timey Scientists. Modern scientists would benefit from more kites, I think.) Since this is in Newfoundland there are obviously hordes of unattended children wandering around with absolutely nothing to do. These children laugh at the men doing science, but when the science is successful the men are so happy that they forget the children’s rudeness and show them how they just got wireless technology off the ground (if you will).

Quotewise, there’s a couple worth loving. The interplay “Do you know where England is?” “Sure, it’s over there.” is fun and, in my opinion, quotable. But the real clincher that makes this Attempt To Make Canada Feel Good About Itself a classic is Marconi’s reading of “Through the air, across the ocean, the first time ever.” Presumably the man had an Italian accent when speaking English, which is to be accepted, but that line is not spoken in an Italian accent. That line is spoken in fluent Robot. That is fact. That is sweet, beautiful, glorious fact.

This one gets Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. Wireless technology is something I consider great in my daily life, and Marconi talking like a robot is something all Canadians should remember fondly.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I have to use the Comedy Network website to watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report because, residing as I do in Canada, the sites that actually belong to the show are blocked here. Now, this annoys me in all kinds of ways: Whenever someone on the Internet links to a clip from one of those shows, they’re gonna link to the real sites, so I can pretty much never follow a link discussing the content. And even if I were bother to try to find the same clip on the Comedy Network site, their library is very much incomplete. There is no way at all for me to go back to the clips from way back in like 2000 or whenever when Colbert/Carell gave us amazing gold all the time. And also sometimes they seem to delay putting up the previous night’s shows for hours after the normal time

But I’m used to that. I’ve had to put up with that all the time. But what really bugs me is the way that the player on the Comedy Network doesn’t seem very good. It always takes a long time to load, but I’m willing to assume that that is in part the fault of my computer (though I rarely have that problem with things like YouTube…), and plus, for all I know the same problem would occur on the actual sites, so I can’t complain. But these last couple days the Comedy Network site has been even worse, often resetting every forty seconds making it pretty much impossible to watch the shows. And I know this time that it isn’t my laptop’s fault.

So, what I’m getting to here, is, if anyone ever scans the Internet looking for opinions on this, I want to be allowed to use the Daily Show and Colbert sites in Canada. C’mon, Comedy Network. If you’re going to make it illegal for me to watch the shows on their actual websites, can’t you at least try to not suck so bad?

In other news, I was awakened by the sound of jackhammering outside today. So that sucked.

This one is boring. It bores me.

This time we’re looking at some Natives who are gathering maple sugar from some maple trees when some white folk come along and are all like “Wha happen?” so the Natives share their syrup secrets and the newcomers profit.

I guess there’s some stuff to like in there. There’s that one kid who totally hides behind a tree for no apparent reason. I like the one guy who is like “hoo hoo!” And there’s some doggies. And is it me or does that one woman toward the beginning totally look like she’s thinking “Oh, there’s those European people. I guess we have to explain this to them now.” That’s amusing.

There is no fun quotes in here though. And that’s the bottom line. I like maple. It’s one of my favorite flavours (even though I’ve never done the whole Syrup on Snow thing), so I’m glad to see it put on a pedestal. Nonetheless, I can only give this one Two out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.

Awwww yeah. This is the real stuff right here.

This time we’ve got the story of how a guy called James, nay, Smith (You’d think that they wouldn’t use the take where they messed up his name on the first try) went to America and invented basketball, apparently as a way to entertain all the moustachioed dudes with suspenders. Right on. As I’ve mentioned before, all I really want from these Parts of My Heritage is for them to be embedded into my brain so that I can reference them throughout my life. Well, we’ve got referencability coming out all over the place in this one. “But I need these baskets back,” alone is but several other lines are suitably memorable. Oh, and also the music is pretty sweet. Plus, basketball apparently had tackling and a vastly more comical form of dribbling? I totally approve, pretty much all around.

This one goes all the way. A classic that totally deserves Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. But who is the dude watching Peach Basket guy retrieve the ball?