Canadian gems
A new series looks at some of the most remote and intriguing areas of Canada, including Nova Scotia’s Sable Island.
Thousands of grey seals gather on Sable Island every winter to give birth. That migratory milestone is one of 75 stories featured in the five-part CBC documentary series The Wild Canadian Year.
“It was one we identified quite early on as a very dramatic wildlife story,” said British Columbia-based filmmaker Jeff Turner during a phone interview.
“What drew us to it was the idea that the grey seals on Sable Island, which is the largest colony of grey seals in the world, give birth in the winter, the harshest period of the year. It’s something quite different in the animal kingdom.
“Obviously, it’s an amazing place and an amazing part of Canada that few people really get a chance to see. And that was kind of another objective of ours; we kind of wanted to showcase some of the more hidden gems of Canada.”
The Wild Canadian Year premiered Sunday to start the new season of The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. It starts with spring, and weekly episodes will track the seasons chronologically. A behind- the-scenes episode on the making of the documentary is scheduled for Oct. 22.
The winter episode also highlighted the 500 permanent residents of Sable Island — the wild horses — that actually benefit from the droppings of the seals. Those droppings fertilize the island’s plants and grass, feeding the horses.
The documentary team only had to endure about three weeks in total on the desolate crescent
off Nova Scotia, unlike the horses living there. Still, there were challenges.
“We obviously had to go through a process with the park and get approval to film there,” Turner said.
“We had to limit the number of people we could have there and be sensitive to the requirements the park has. It took us the better part of a year and a half to get things all sorted to get out there, because we had a small window to make it work in the wintertime.”
Segments for the series were shot in all 13 provinces and territories, a privilege probably earned from positive feedback for an earlier series completed by Turner’s River Road Films Ltd. for CBC.
“We had made a series for CBC that came out in 2014 that was called Wild Canada. That was a four-part series that kind of looked at the natural history of Canada through the different regions
of the country, and also the influence that people have played on shaping that landscape over thousands of years.
“They really liked it and knew that 2017 was coming up, the 150th birthday of Canada, and they wanted to do another kind of natural history celebration of Canada. So we started talking to them and kind of came up with this idea to look at the natural history and the wildlife of Canada through the lens of the seasons.”
Turner said the team spent months researching potential stories it could tell. They talked to scientists and researchers, trying to figure out what might be the most interesting.
“At the end of the day, you always end up filming a few more stories than what make it in the final version,” he said.
“I totalled up the number of filming days we had on this project in the field, filming this series.
It was like filming every single day for two years.”
Turner said one of his favourite stories in the series was shot relatively close to home, and it presented the rare opportunity to capture something unique in the wild.
“We heard of a place on the coast of B.C. where wolves hunted sea otters. That was something that has never really been seen or documented before,” he said. “This one particular group of wolves has kind of figured out a way to hunt them. That’s very new behaviour.”
Turner has been making wildlife films for about 30 years. He said he has benefited from the growing interest in the genre, thanks to superior high-definition efforts from the BBC and CBC.
“When you can take really high-quality cinematography and storytelling, and get into these places and capture and see some of these unique and interesting behaviours, it’s fascinating and beautiful television.”