I don’t know quite what it is, but this feels like one of the least educational or captivating Heritage Moments I’ve seen. It’s like this: These guys are practicing music. They have to practice O Canada. They don’t do it well for a second. Then they do it well.

I like that one guy’s accent (are Les Voltigeurs de Quebec a bilingual group or is he speaking Engish because he knows he’s being used to fill Canadian children in the future with national pride?). I like the way he laughs when they don’t play well the first time (I know nothing of professional music. Are they really expected to do it perfectly the first time they see the sheet music?). That’s about all I got here. It’s not bad, it’s just there.

I’m only giving this one Two out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. It washes over me and leaves nothing behind. That’s that. I’m done thinking about it.

This time we meet Joe Tyrrell, a scientist who discovers dinosaur bones. Surprise dinosaur bones are, like, seven times better than regular dinosaur bones. Canada wins!

This one gets a Piece of Cake for the soundtrack. Mostly I mean the native chanting there, but there’s a bit of other stuff going on. That all adds up to a nice bit of atmosphere.

I’ll dole out another Piece of Cake for Tyrrell himself. He’s got a beard worth respect. Also, this is another case of only having one person during the whole Moment. He carries it himself, aided only by the landscape, and it works out fine. Its interesting how sometimes they can fit so much story into a minute, and other times they do so little. It doesn’t hurt this piece to be simple, though, because there’s not much expansion you can do with a “guy finds surprise dinosaur bones” plot.

I’ll throw another Piece at it for being about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are literally dinosaurs. So they’re awesome. And one more Piece for the phrase “Grandfather of the Buffalo”, which is totally cool and deserves more play (and is as close as this piece comes to a quotable bit).

So thanks to math, I know that this Heritage Moment has earned Four Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. Not bad.

This is a simple one. It’s Windsor Castle in 1841 and we have a discussion between the Queen of England and some guy named Lord Melbourne (Though I always heard “Lord Melvin” in my youth) about letting Canada have a “responsible government”. I’d be a lot more interested in this if the term “responsible government” meant that we’d finally be getting a government that knew better than to do things like leaving the door so the cat can get out or spending all our money on toy skeletons, instead of the political meaning it actually has, which is something about us being allowed to elect folk from Canada to govern. Sounds like too much work to me. Interestingly, this piece has a discussion about Canada, but it is not set in Canada and features no Canadians. Why should Canada pretend that anything that happens elsewhere is important? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of nationalism?

I must say that this one is a goldmine for great quotes that I would never find a useful in daily life. Many of the best Heritage Moment quotes are just unspecific enough that you can apply them elsewhere. These ones are all pretty directly about the debate at hand. That’s a shame. While the Queen has a lot of good buts, pretty much everything Lord Melbourne says is golden. My favorite is the bit about “some obscure politician from Montreal… or Toronto.” You tell them Melbourne. Also, your facial hair is godly.

I feel I can only justify Three and a Half Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. This isn’t a bad one, but it is just lacking enough to be awesome.

Anyway, I assume the handmaiden who said “Pity Ma’am” was later murdered for pitying the Queen. Queenie don’t need your pity, handmaiden.

This is one of my favorites, I’ll just get this out of the way at the start. It is 980 AD and we have a highly stylized attack on a highly stylized viking village in Newfoundland. Our native attacker, apparently there is only one, is in a first-person stabbing game it seems. He walks into a ghostly viking’s home and murders this one guy. The guy’s ghostly viking neighbors come running and find their dead friend (the native apparently having fled, I guess). Then we’ve got a viking funeral (is that taps? I think the vikings are playing taps) and the vikings leave. Their village falls prey to a time lapse and then, in the 1960s and some scientists find out that there was once a village there.

Our Norwegian scientists are Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad (as a child I heard this as “Helga and Onastina Ingsta”, but I should have known the lady would never get top billing) and their scientific work (which consisted entirely of sticking one trowel into some dirt = Fact) shows that the vikings made it to Newfoundland way before other whiteys made it to North America. Good to know.

“Do you know what I think this is?” probably shouldn’t be one of my favorite Heritage Moment quotes, but it is. Maybe it’s just because it is the only non-narrator line of dialogue in the whole piece, but I also like the universal nature of this quote. I don’t have to wait for someone to ask if someone can fly so I can reply “Fly no…” and nobody has to wait until I say my name to say “Patrick, Patrick O’Neil” with this quote. You can ask anyone if they know what you think a thing is whenever you want. Try it today.

I’m giving this highly stylized Heritage Moment Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. It’s a little light in the educational department, but it is an interesting watch.

It’s a little suspicious that we never see the native attacker. I entertain an idea about this: Our viking victim was, in fact, murdered by his wife! See how quickly he reacts to someone barging into his home? He’s not surprised. He doesn’t hesitate. Is that how you’d react if you were… smithing or whatever, and suddenly someone barged in to do a murder at you? I think not. But suppose you’d been arguing with the viking missus and she stormed out, grabbed the native weapon she happened to have found the day before, and stormed back in intent on releasing her womanly fury. When the others arrive they find the murderer pretending to mourn, accusing some native attack and sticking to her story so strongly that even the establishing captions thought it was a native attack. Well, fictional dead lady, you almost got away with it, but you didn’t reckon on the excellent deductive reasoning of PDR. Case closed.

The other option is that between the viking colonists and the Norwegian scientists the only proper Canadian in this minute is a murderer.

Today’s Heritage Moment is about sporting. If you live in a nation, there is literally nothing more important than being able to beat other nations in sport. This is more important than anything. Anything at all.

Specifically we’re looking at Canada, just a few days old, challenging English and French teams in canoeing (or some kinda boat race anyway). These plucky up-and-comers are the underdogs and they win anyway. Who woulda thinked it? Maybe this Canada thing will turn out alright after all.

We are told that nobody respects the team, dressed as they are “in their absurd red caps and brown suspenders.” I don’t know what is worse, the old timey time people who thought red caps and brown suspenders in some way affect ones ability to do boating, or the narrator who uses the word “absurd” as if he agrees with them. But what really gets me is how much money the team’s hometown wagered on this. Do they just have that kind of money lying around? In that whole young town is there nothing that they might be better off spending money on? NO! This is more important than anything. Anything at all.

Anyway, I don’t have much else to say. It’s got decent music and I like the pacing. In spite of his hatred of caps and suspenders, the narrator does a good job. There’s not a lot of quotability here, sadly (though, if some band ever takes the name “The Legendary Parisians” I’d totally support them). I feel like I have to call this one above average. Let’s go with Three and a Half Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.