For just about any Canadian around the age of 30 or so, an important cultural touchstone was Hinterland Who's Who, a series of one minute public service announcements from the Canadian Wildlife Service. Critic Geoff Pevere explains its appeal in his book Mondo Canuck: A Canadian Pop Culture Odyssey:
Each one minute spot opened with the Hinterland Who's Who logo and a distinctive phrase of music--a doleful flute melody that, for most Canadians over 30, is as recognizable as the theme to Hockey Night In Canada
Then, in footage shot by naturalists, we'd see our best-known critters just chillin' on their won turf...In Hinterland's early years...was narrated by John Livingston, a guy who redefined the term "leisurely pace." His languid, mellow tones practically lulled the viewer to sleep as he shared pearls of wisdom like "with all the wood-cutting the beaver has to do, it's fortunate that his incisor teeth never stop growing"
Truly, Hinterland Who's Who could make a minute seem like an hour. So how have these mind-numbingly boring spots stayed on the air for more than 30 years? Simple, Hinterland has sold nature to us in a modest, distinctly Canadian way: no flashy effects, no snappy background music under Livingston's narration and (god forbid) no rapid-fire editing to liven up the pace.
I grew up with these, and when people want to know how Canadians are the way they are, I point people to these spots.
Posted by Graeme Burk at July 17, 2004 10:33 AMSimilarly perhaps, for me Dave Prowse will always the the Green Cross Man rather than the guy with the throat complaint.
Posted by: Alan Allport at July 18, 2004 12:09 PMI know Alan will be wanting to order this photo, then.
Pernicket: wasn't the "throat complaint" part of the role performed by James Earl Jones?
Interesting that Prowse was in both the original "Star Wars" and in Terry Gilliam's "Jabberwocky," since both were being filmed at the same time at Elstree Studios. Supposedly at the time "Jabberwocky" was viewed as being the more professional operation of the two. Life is strange.
Re: animals of the great north -- I couldn't get the "Who's Who" clips to run on this machine but gather they're dull -- well, if so, it beats the falsification involved in the "life-or-death struggle" school of nature documentaries as satirized by Monty Python.
A few years ago we stayed at a Canadian bed & breakfast run in part by a wonderful ex-RCMP guy who had shifted his specialty to policing dangerous bears. He said dealing with bears was no different from doing police work in a bad neighborhood of human beings: if you knew the various characters and handled them accordingly it wasn't daunting after all.
Am btw in general beginning to suspect that few of the things in life commonly said to be dramatic are actually all that dramatic really. Dunno. Does this make me likely to turn into a Canadian and if so will I lose the ability to play tennis? (No loss. Was never any good in the first place.)