REMEMBERING D-DAY
Canadian locales stand in for battle sites in the latest Heritage Minutes tribute
Chris Petry grew up near McKenzie Lake in Calgary.
But even in the wildest reaches of the future-filmmaker’s imagination, it’s doubtful he ever dreamed he would one day help transform the shores of the peaceful manmade lake into the battle-ravaged beaches of Normandy during D -Day.
But that was part of the task in directing the latest Heritage Minutes spot, a heart-wrenching tribute to the Canadian soldiers who participated in the June 6, 1944, invasion that helped bring an end to the Second World War.
Petry’s first thought when surveying his lake: “Get me some sand.
“At one point we entertained going to these beaches overseas,” says Petry. “But the reality is, you know, just give us some sand and we’ll build the set. We’ll put some smoke in there. We’ll have intimate lensing and we’ll figure out how to do this. And we did.”
The transformation is just one of the marvels in the newest Heritage Minutes spot, which was shot in two days last September. Thanks to both practical and computer-generated visual effects, the production seems exceptionally grander in scale than what seems possible from a two-day shoot.
Young terrified soldiers are shown in the heat of battle. There are bodies and barbed wire. Fighter planes thunder overhead. Buildings smoulder. The horizon is dotted with battleships and anti-aircraft dirigibles and anti-tank Czech hedgehogs. There’s even a hazy flashback sequence.
All of this transpires in 60 seconds.
“It was an interesting thing when we were shooting,” says Petry. “You just have to tell everybody: ‘Don’t look at the train station and the trees, because that’s going to be ships and blimps and a blown-up town.’”
On top of the impressive production design, special effects, costuming and attention to detail, the narrative manages to zoom in on the experiences of one soldier to convey a bigger story of the heroism Canadians showcased that day when storming Juno Beach. The story was brought to life by writer Davida Aronovitch of Historica Canada, the Toronto-based organization that produces Heritage Minutes.
It centres on New Brunswick native Maj. John Archibald MacNaughton, who was among hundreds of Canadian casualties that day. Forty-seven years old and a veteran of the First World War, MacNaughton had more than earned his right to retire from the battlefield and raise his family in Canada. But he felt obligated to lead the young soldiers of the North Shore New Brunswick Regiment into Normandy.
“Major MacNaughton had served in World War I, come home, started to live his life as a shepherd in New Brunswick again and got the call,” says producer Brent Kawchuk of Calgary’s Bamboo Shoots, the company Historica Canada commissioned to make the segment.
“He had the opportunity to retire and said ‘No, I’m needed. I was once like these boys who are going over now. They need some leadership, they need some guidance.’ In a lot of ways, he had the newbies, the misfits, the guys that needed a shepherd in every respect to take them over.”
It’s all part of the template for Heritage Minutes, which tend to highlight a smaller story inside a bigger one to shine a light on an important moment or figure in Canadian history. More than 80 of the popular TV spots were produced between 1991 and 2005. Nine years ago, Historica Canada began making them again. Bamboo Shoots has helped resurrect the popular 60-second spots. In 2015, the company oversaw two: Nursing Sisters about nurses in the First World War and Winnipeg Falcons, which featured Letterkenny’s Jared Keeso in a story about how the First World War affected the first team to win a gold in Olympic hockey. Since then, the company has also produced segments on Terry Fox, pioneering women’s basketball team The Edmonton Grads and civil rights activist Viola Desmond.
D-Day is Petry’s first Heritage Minutes. He brought in veteran character actor Michael Shanks to play MacNaughton. Iconic news anchor Peter Mansbridge provides the voice-over narration at the end of the story.
Historian Norman Leach was also enlisted as a consultant.
“He studies all this stuff and coached the actors,” Kawchuk says. “He had little things, like how to carry the weapons and how their eyes darted when they walked.”
But for all the attention to detail and impressive effects, it’s balanced with an intimate story that packs an emotional punch. Most of it is narrated by an actress voicing MacNaughton’s daughter, who was six years old when her dad was killed.
“We had a lot of mandates,” Petry says. “We needed it to be expositional, we needed it to be historical and we wanted to capture what all of these soldiers went through on that day. But the one thing we all agreed on was that the best way to respect all of these soldiers was to properly tell the story of one; to tell an emotional story of one person that people could gravitate to and understand. It wasn’t just about the soldiers, it was about the families and what they lost. We wanted to be clear about that.
“Everyone sacrificed here, including the people back home. There was a six-year-old girl who had to grow up without a father and that’s just as important to the story.”
The D-Day Heritage Minutes spot is available online at historicacanada.ca.