The New Boys

This documentary short introduces us to Bob Keen, a Northwest legend and self-made millionaire. Bob began his career bulldozing mountain roads with a second-hand caterpillar tractor that gave him his nickname: Catskinner. Now he owns oil land, operates road, water and air transport, flies a plane, drives a chuckwagon, and is listed on the stock exchange. This film profiles a modest man who still likes sitting by a campfire with old cowpuncher pals in the Canadian Rockies.

This documentary short introduces us to The Badlanders, an Alberta band from the Drumheller area. When hard times came to southern Alberta during the 1930s, a generation of young musicians turned to their instruments to lighten the gloom and earn extra money by playing at Saturday night country dances. The film invites you to meet and listen to members of the original band, as well as some members of the younger generation who just don't dig the country music vibe.

Viewer Advisory: This film contains scenes of animal slaughter.

This short documentary profiles Ruth and Harriet, two women in their thirties who live in the Peace River area of northern Alberta. Strongly individualistic, Ruth and Harriet care for their families and homesteads in a manner as self-reliant as that of any pioneer of the past. The river, the bush, and the wildlife make up their true home. This film offers a portrait of a uniquely Canadian rural landscape and lifestyle.

Fishermen fly in from the concrete jungles of New York and Chicago to Lac La Ronge in northern Saskatchewan for "the best freshwater fishing in the world." In a few days they want to catch the biggest and the most. Five or six plane-loads of fishermen arrive every day during the peak season, all with this same ambition. Indigenous guides, on the receiving end of the pressure, feel they have to go on strike occasionally. Van Bliss, the bluff and affable host of the camp, is caught in the middle of this head-on meeting between two vastly different cultures.

This short documentary focuses on prairie sculptor Joe Fafard. If there's one thing Joe knows, it's cows. He knows the way they tuck in their forelegs to lie down to ruminate and the way a calf romps in the barnyard. He also knows his friends and neighbours in the farming community of Pense, Saskatchewan—and he sculpts them all in clay, as eloquent and quirky miniatures. Joe's work has been exhibited throughout Canada as well as in Paris and New York, and this film offers a glimpse into his process, his aesthetic, and the charming prairie community in which he lives.

This short documentary tells the story of the first Jewish settlers to Winnipeg, people who fled European persecution at the turn of the century and founded a new community in a Canadian city.

At twenty-six, Noel Starblanket was one of the youngest Indigenous chiefs in North America--twice elected chief of the Starblanket Reserve, and also elected vice-president of all-Saskatchewan Indigenous organization. His great-grandfather's advice was to "learn the wit and cunning of the White man." That he did. Here he is seen in action, a chief with a briefcase, working with government officials for grants, running for public office, talking down his opposition, and solving the domestic problems of his reserve.

Filmed in the Canadian Rockies and in Garibaldi Park, this documentary features magnificent footage of mountain solitudes and the wildlife found there, of natural splendour in all its changing moods. The film carries the implicit warning that all this may pass away if people do not seek to preserve it. Without words.

This documentary short is a cinematic recording of Tales from a Prairie Drifter, a stage comedy about the North-West Resistance during the opening of the Canadian West. Highlighting the roles of Louis Riel, the Resistance leader, prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald and General Middleton, who was sent to quell the uprising, the play defines the First nations and Métis cause more succinctly than many history books. Here, the play is performed by the Regina Globe Theatre before an Indigineous audience of First Nations and Métis, whose reactions are recorded.

Halifax's Junior Bengal Lancers: The youngest riding team in Canada gives a spectacular exhibition of horsemanship. Where the Big Ones Grow Bigger and Bigger: Great Slave Lake gives sport to the businessman who comes in by air to battle with the fighting lake trout. From Jobs and Schools to Swimming Pools: Twenty girls of the Peterborough Ornamental Swimming Club give an exhibition of synchronized swimming. Alberta Blitzes Prairie Killers: Alberta farmers hunt and shoot coyotes, predators of livestock and poultry, from swift-flying light aircraft.

Kitchener Waterloo Collegiate and Vocational School embodies some of the best features of public secondary education today. The school encourages students to learn beyond the classroom through innovative programs like Cooperative Education or Community Involvement, and welcomes adults into the school to complete their education or upgrade their skills. Through candid views of school activities, classroom discussions, and interviews with staff and students, the film takes its audience through a busy day at a large urban high school. It approaches many of the questions in the current debate on education.