Heritage Minute

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Heritage Minutes (Historica Minutes: History by the Minute) are sixty-second short films each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. They appear frequently on Canadian television and in cinemas before movies. The minutes were first introduced on March 31, 1991 as part of a one-off heavily-promoted history quiz show hosted by Rex Murphy. The thirteen original short films were broken up and run between shows on CBC. The continued broadcast of the Minutes and the production of new ones was pioneered by Charles Bronfman's CRB Foundation and Canada Post (with Bell Canada being a later sponsor). They have been produced and narrated by noted Canadian broadcaster Patrick Watson.

While the CRB has not paid networks to air the minutes, they have made them freely available. The main attraction to running them is that the CRTC has ruled that they can each count as ninety-seconds of a station's Canadian content requirements.

The Heritage Minutes themselves have become part of Canadian culture, being frequently parodied. The high production values and entertaining but educating content has met general acclaim and today there are over sixty of them. While popular, they have been criticized. Robert Fulford, for instance, has attacked them for their solemn pomposity.

[edit] List of Heritage Minutes

Agnes Macphail demanding penal reform
Andrew Mynarski's brave attempt to free his friend from a bomber turret
The development of the Avro Arrow
Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin build interlingual cooperation
James Naismith's invention of Basketball
The Bluenose wins its last race
Paul-Emile Bordua's art and the Quiet Revolution
Joseph Casavant world renowned organ maker
The art of Emily Carr
Emily Murphy's quest for equal rights for women
Étienne Parent demands equality for French and English
The planning for Expo '67
MP John Matheson looks at candidates for Canada's new flag
John McCrae pens In Flanders Fields
New France, under the leadership of governor Louis de Buade de Frontenac repels the British invasion of 1690
Frontier College educates those away from the urban centres
Englishman Archie Belaney becomes Grey Owl
Vince Coleman sacrifices his own life to save a train from the Halifax Explosion
The efforts of Louis-Joseph Papineau gives full equality of religion to Jews in Canada
An Inuksuk is built
Jackie Robinson joins the Montreal Royals
Jacques Plante becomes the first NHL goaltender to wear a mask in regular play
Jennie Trout becomes Canada's first woman doctor
John Cabot discovers the Grand Banks
John Humphrey drafts the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Inventor Joseph-Armand Bombardier and beginnings of his passion for engineering
Mary Travers becomes a famed popular singer in Quebec
Laura Secord aids the British in the War of 1812 with an overland trek to warn of an American military advance
Thomas Eadie develops the trans-Canadian microwave network
The rehearsal for the first performance of O Canada
The achievements and execution of Louis Riel
Surgeon Lucille Teasdale devotes her life to helping the poor in Africa
Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signals in Newfoundland
Female WWII pilot Marion Orr
Marshall McLuhan coins the phrase "the medium is the message"
Maurice Ruddick recounts the 1958 Springhill mine disaster
The importance of Midwives in early Canada
The town of Myrnham, Alberta forms a non-denominational hospital.
Jacques Cartier misunderstands some Natives resulting in the name Canada
Nat Taylor invents the multiplex
Nellie McClung demands the right to vote in Manitoba
Jean Nicollet becomes the first European to reach Lake Michigan, but thinks it's the Pacific
A young Chinese-Canadian risks his life helping to build the Canadian Pacific Railway
Quebecois families adopt Irish orphans in the 1850s while allowing them to keep their original names.
The surprise victory of the Paris Crew, a group of unheralded Canadian rowers, at the 1867 World Championships
Georges and Pauline Vanier and their lifetimes of achievement
The formation of the Iroquois Confederacy
Dr. Wilder Penfield makes important discoveries in neuroscience when a patient smells burnt toast as the initial signal for an epileptic seizure.
Queen Victoria decides to grant Canada responsible government after the crushing of the Rebellions of 1837
Maurice Richard scores five goals and three assists for eight points in a single game. His explosive 18-year career made him the most exciting player of his generation and a hero to Quebeckers.

A Meeting of the School Trustees (Robert Harris, 1885)

Teacher Kate Henderson sways school trustees to embrace new methods, and the event is immortalized in a famous painting by Robert Harris.
The 1870 fire in the Saguenay
Sir Sanford Fleming develops the system of international standard time.
Sitting Bull seeks refuge in Canada
Prairie settlers build a house of sod
Sam Steele of the RCMP bars an unruly American from the Yukon despite being threatened at gunpoint
The beginning of the Stratford Festival of Canada
Joe Shuster creates Superman
A First Nations family teaches early settlers how to make maple syrup
J.S. Woodsworth convinces parliament to introduce old age pensions
Joseph Burr Tyrrell discovers a plethora of dinosaur bones in Alberta
An African-American escapes to Canada along the Underground Railroad
Three men from Pine Street in Winnipeg win the Victoria Cross in World War I, and the street's name is changed to Valour Road in their honour.
L'Anse aux Meadows is settled by Vikings
Canadian Mennonites devise sustainable agriculture practices that aid the Third World
The bear of a Canadian soldier becomes the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh
A Native Canadian grandfather explains the significance of the Great Peace to his granddaughter.
Johnny Lombardi entertains his comrades in the field during a respite of the World War II D-Day taking of Juno Beach by Canadian forces.
Sgt. Major John Robert Osborn sacrifices his life to protect his men in the Battle of Hong Kong in World War II and is posthumonously granted the Victoria Cross.
Mona Parsons, a partisan World War II Allied agent in the Netherlands escapes execution and later imprisonment by the Nazis and meets her future husband who confirms her nationality to Canadian forces liberating the nation.
Brigadier-General Jacques Dextraze resolves a hostage situation in the Congo with his UN Peacekeeping forces contingent.
General Arthur Currie prepares his Canadian forces for the successful taking of Vimy Ridge in World War I.
Returning World War II veterans successfully agitate for increasing housing assistance.
A eulogy is given for Tommy Prince, Canada’s most-decorated Aboriginal war veteran
The hanging of Louis Riel