Camera Canada


Camera Canada is a Canadian documentary television series which aired on CBC Television from 1961 to 1963.

Premise

This was an occasional series of documentaries concerning modern Canadian history, filmed by various producers. It was inspired by the results of various CBC documentaries broadcast in mid-1960.

Scheduling

The series was randomly scheduled approximately once per month between 13 November 1961 and 14 January 1963. Camera Canada episodes were generally hour-long productions which were frequently broadcast on Mondays, usually in place of the normal Festival time slot.

Episodes

  • "The Annanacks", featuring an Inuit community
  • "Big Country", concerning a western Canadian cattle drive
  • "Boys Village", concerning a reform school
  • "Camera on Canada"
  • "Campus in the Clouds", featuring the Banff School of Fine Arts
  • "The Changing Island"
  • "Ciao Maria", featuring Italians in Toronto
  • "False Faces", featuring an Iroquois-Huron ceremony in 1961. Bonnière later made a fictional feature film with Crawley Films called Amanita Pestilens.
  • "Gold: The Fabulous Years"
  • "High Arctic Hunter"
  • "Hockey: An Affectionate Look"
  • "Last Summer", regarding mating in nature; aired 11 December 1961
  • "The Looking Glass People", regarding ballet
  • "The Lost Decade", concerning the Great Depression
  • "The Measure of Man", featuring the study of the mind and its methods
  • "My Enemy", from the Andre Chamson short story
  • "The Opening of the West"
  • "Pelly Bay", regarding the activities of an Inuk person
  • "The Promised Land"
  • "The Short Sweet Summer", featuring the 1963 tour of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.
  • "Tale of Three Cities"
  • "The Unknown Country Revisited" – Canadians' express views about their nation. This documentary followed Hutchinson as he revisited parts of Canada he documented in his 1942 book The Unknown Country: Canada and Her People.
  • "Upper Canada Village"
  • "The View From Geneva", featuring the Red Cross
  • "Wilderness", regarding the wildernesses of Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon; a plane crash killed Caton and two camera operators during production of this documentary.
  • "The World of Bobby Hull"
  • A documentary comparing current and 1930s university graduates
  • A feature on the newly created Canada Council and its first director, A. W. Trueman.

Controversy

"Ciao Maria", broadcast in January 1963, portrayed the lives of some selected Italian-Canadians. However, the portrayal of that community drew outrage from Toronto Italian community leaders such as broadcaster Johnny Lombardi and Toronto Roman Catholic priest Emmanuel Faraone. They complained that the documentary provided a distorted, low-brow view of Italians and failed to show the community's positive moral and cultural attributes.
After the end of this series, the CBC produced documentaries in anticipation of the 1967 Canadian Centennial under the Canada 98, Canada 99 and Canada 100 titles.