To serve and protect
New CBC documentary series focuses on everyday heroes who keep us safe
To paraphrase a 1960s TV crime show, there are a million tales in the naked city.
Eight-part CBC documentary series Keeping Canada Safe, premièring this Thursday, captures a few dozen of them, culled from footage 60 camera crews shot over a 48-hour period last September.
From firefighters, police and CSIS agents to crossing guards and rat catchers, the fast-paced series casts a wide net, shadowing people from 47 organizations in 34 burgs across the country, covering every province and territory save the Yukon.
“When you sit down to watch this, there’s something for everybody,” says supervising producer Dianna Bodnar. “You can just put your feet up and it’s a very exciting procedural kind of drama — you know, like you would get from a television drama. And on the other hand it kind of sinks in that, ‘Whoa, this is real life.’ These are real people and it’s not only dramatic and exciting, but there are more intimate stories where you really get to understand and know people.”
Two half-hour episodes air to back-to-back each week, presenting rapid-fire glimpses of everyday heroes in action and focusing on a handful of stories. The opening episode takes viewers for a ride with Calgary’s Helicopter Air Watch for Community Safety (HAWCS). Created in 1995, after a police officer was killed during a high-speed chase, HAWCS can cover as much area as 10 or 12 police cars.
The helicopter is ultra-silent, so suspects on the ground may be oblivious to its presence. But not much escapes on-board tactical officer Const. Dan Kim, thanks to a plethora of high-tech gadgetry — night vision, a powerful camera that can zoom in for extreme close-ups on objects and people, and intense beams of light that can illuminate an entire city block.
It seems like an impersonal way to police a city, and it’s a bit unsettling to know average Joe Citizen may be subject to this kind of stealth surveillance, but Bodnar says HAWCS only tracks alleged perpetrators of crimes — and if you were a potential victim, you’d welcome the intrusion.
While the cameras were rolling, HAWCS got a call about a man who had jumped into a woman’s car and demanded she drive him to another location. When she refused, the suspect assaulted her and ran off. As the chopper arrived, he was trying to break into a house in a suburban area one of the film crew recognized.
“As they’re tracking this perpetrator, the director realizes once they get closer and closer that they’re actually in his own neighbourhood, and when the guy was trying to force his way into the house it was pretty much 10 doors down from where he lives. And his wife and his family are there, so it really kind of hit home for him.”
Meanwhile, in St. John’s, N.L., another camera crew follows a police team whose feet — and hoofs — are firmly on the ground.
Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Const. George Horan and Const. Jennifer Clarke are grooming their massive Percheron draft horses, preparing to patrol the city’s notoriously rowdy George Street. The horses are well-suited to the job. They have the endurance to walk for miles on end, they’re people-friendly, and they’re mighty effective at crowd control. Horan says partiers won’t move off the street to let a police car pass, but the Percherons are another story.
“Walk down with a horse and it’s like the parting of the Red Sea,” he says.
Like last season’s docuseries Keeping Canada Alive, Keeping Canada Safe is modelled after a British ITV series. Bodnar says shooting within a 48-hour window was risky. Crews had no idea if their ride-alongs would be actionpacked or snooze patrols.
“That’s why we shot with so many people,” she says. “Some of the things that happen are very dramatic and surprising. Sometimes it really is just the day to day of what they do that just sinks in that’s very meaningful and you kind of realize, ‘Wow, this is what these people put themselves on the line for every day.’ It’s really quite incredible.”
There’s a small-town cop on Prince Edward Island who begins each day at the local cemetery, visiting the grave of a young girl who was killed in a car accident; a volunteer community patrol whose members make their streets a little safer in Winnipeg; a canine unit at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and a student who teaches Muslim women to defend themselves from racist attacks.
In the end, there were too many stories to tell in the TV broadcast, but there are many, if not a million, more on the CBC’s digital platform at cbc.ca/keepingcanadasafe.