(Historica Canada)
Historica Canada, the organization that brings Canadians our beloved Heritage Minutes, showcasing some of our history’s greatest moments, released a mash-up video that splices snippets from 24-year-old worth of Minutes so they’re set to the beat of Drake’s Started from the Bottom. Watch that video here.
The video used 53 of the 82 existing Heritage Minutes. Here’s a shot-list of all the clips used in the mash-up, in their order of appearance. Clips in bold form the song’s chorus. The newest video, Nursing Sisters, is at the bottom.
- Sir George-Étienne Cartier: A highlight reel of how the Father of Confederation helped stitch our country together.
- Sitting Bull: The Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux chief who orchestrated the events of Custer’s Last Stand, lived “under the protection of The Grandmother’s Peace” (referring to Queen Victoria) but was, eventually, starved out by Canada, a reminder of our shaky relations with aboriginals.
- Basketball: In perhaps the most classic line ever uttered in a Heritage Minute, James Naismith contravenes a handyman’s wishes to not break his peach baskets—thusly inventing basketball.
- Maurice Ruddick: The story of the African-Canadian who kept the spirits up of the seven miners he was trapped with when Nova Scotia’s Springhill mine collapsed in 1958; due to racist attitudes he wasn’t even allowed to attend the vacation arranged for the survivors.
- Wilder Penfield: The man known at one time as “the greatest Canadian alive” was a pioneering neurosurgeon who helped map the brain. The video spawned the classic line: “I can smell burnt toast!”
- Queenston Heights: In the clip, John Norton gives a rousing speech to inspire warriors to rally against the invading Americans at the mouth of the Niagara River, despite the death of British general Isaac Brock.
- Expo 67: A black-and-white retelling of the story of the man who came up with the idea for the manmade island, Ile Notre-Dame, that would host Canada’s centennial birthday party.
- Governor Frontenac: How French colonists in Frontenac rallied around their governor, Louis de Buade, as he stood up against the British.
- Inukshuk: An RCMP officer watches as Inuit build an Inukshuk. This video also has one of the series’ most memorable lines: “Now the people will know we were here.”
- Tommy Prince: An Ojibwa soldier who won 10 medals in the Second World War, making him one of Canada’s most decorated; he struggled with alcoholism and poverty despite his war glories.
- Rural Teacher: Teacher Kate Henderson takes on stodgy traditional school trustees in a recreation of Robert Harris’s painting ‘The Meeting of the School Trustees.’
- Flags: The story of how Canada got its uniting flag, amid many other options, as told through the perspective of MP John Matheson.
- Winnipeg Falcons: Inside the dressing room of the Winnipeg squad of Icelandic-Canadians who served in the First World War before bringing home the very first Olympic gold in hockey.
- Marconi: Short-sighted children laugh at a group of researchers trying to fly a kite with an antenna on it, foolishly unaware that it will allow Guglielmo Marconi to develop the telegraph.
- Nellie McClung: The feminist and activist delivers a speech to rebuke what she’s told: that nice women “don’t want the vote.”
- Halifax Explosion: Vince Coleman urges Haligonians to flee before an explosion that would devastate the city, killing even him as he heroically telegraphed a train to stop.
- Richard Pierpoint: Born in Senegal but enslaved in America, he demanded to fight as a Loyalist at the age of 68, earning the right to defend Upper Canada in the War of 1812.
- Myrnam Hospital: The tale of a poor, mostly Ukrainian area just east of Edmonton in desperate need of a hospital, where the community banded together to create one—the first steps toward universal medicare.
- Emily Carr: How the painter Emily Carr, whose works are imbued with the natural mystique of the West Coast, came to love her land.
- Andrew Mynarski
- Mona Parsons
- Le Reseau
- Pauline Vanier
- Nat Taylor
- Syrup
- La Bolduc
- Responsible Government
- Jean Nicolet
- Frontier College
- Saguenay Fire
- Emily Murphy
- Home From the Wars
- Nitro
- Grey Owl
- Hart & Papineau
- Water Pump
- Louis Riel
- Midwife
- Jennie Trout
- Jacques Cartier
- Joseph-Armand Bombardier
- Marshall McLuhan: The medium is the message, McLuhan famously wrote, and this very short film is a good way to tell his story.
- Paul-Emile Borduas
- Jacques Plante
- Peacemaker
- Valour Road
- Sam Steele
- Agnes MacPhail
- Avro Arrow
- Winnie
- Superman
- Underground Railroad
- Nursing Sisters: The newest video, released in May 14, celebrates the contributions of nurses in wartime with the story of Eden Pringle.
FILED UNDER: heritage minutes
