Heritage Minutes

Why it works

Sixty-second dramas about moments in Canadian history, broadcast in the commercial breaks: the three Victoria Cross winners from one Winnipeg street that became Valour Road, Jacques Plante's goalie mask, the Underground Railroad, and Dr Wilder Penfield's patient crying “I smell burnt toast” as he maps the brain. The philanthropist Charles Bronfman conceived them in the 1980s because he believed young Canadians were never taught their own heroes and myths, and the first Minutes appeared in 1991. It is studied as a pioneering use of the commercial format for civic education: the films ran between cartoons and other programmes, and “I smell burnt toast” became a generational catchphrase. Historica Canada, which produces them and relaunched the series in 2012, says that in a single month the Minutes still aired thousands of times and reached millions of viewers.