Montreal: The Minutes are ticking away again. Quebec singing legend La Bolduc and pioneer snowmobile inventor Joseph-Armand Bombardier are the subjects of the latest Heritage Minutes (Minutes du patrimone) dramatizations. The one-minute history bites, the 38th and 39th in the series, were shot here last month under the direction of Jean Beaudin (Shehaweh, Les Filles de Caleb).

The Bolduc and Bombardier spots were produced by Robert-Guy Scully through his Montreal-based production company, Information Essentielle. Scully and cbc chairman Patrick Watson are the series creative consultants.

First produced in 1990, the spots have been shot on location and in studio from British Columbia to Newfoundland. An additional 26 Minutes are in the planning.

As with all the Heritage Minutes, the two new spots are slated to be screened in more than 700 theatres across Canada as well as on conventional and cable tv stations from coast to coast.

Cumulatively, the one-minute bites add up to nine hours a month on Canadian television, says Watson. It is this unprecedented exposure, and the first-rate production conditions, that have drawn interest in the series from many of the industry’s top directors and writers.

The spots are ‘densely packed and a little bit cryptic, so you don’t get it all’ on first screening, says Watson.

In the Bolduc and Bombardier bites, the producers have done justice to their Quebec heroes. After 60 years, the immensely popular Depression era singer Bolduc remains one of Quebec’s most cherished artists, while Bombardier’s legacy can be seen, and heard, wherever there’s snow.

Art directed by Alain Singher, the sets for the La Bolduc and Bombardier spots are stunningly elaborate and accurate. Five decor setups were used for La Bolduc, and two exterior sequences were shot, according to delegate producer Martin Dufour.

‘Jean (Beaudin) is used to having everything, and we tried to give him just what he wanted,’ says Dufour.

Post-production and transfer was done at Astral Tech.

The new spots are particularly ambitious, says Scully, host of the popular cbc business magazine Venture and a new cbc production called Scully/The World Show.

‘With all these Minutes we have many intentions, whether we achieve them all or not,’ says Scully. ‘We’d like to be true to history, we would like to do drama in 60 seconds and perhaps bring up images in people’s minds about the lives that they live today.’

Adds Watson: ‘The whole point of the Minutes, when we’re dealing with an unknown subject, is not so much to create a little encyclopedia and tell everybody all about it, but to provoke curiosity so that the next time they hear the name, or see a book or an article in the paper, they’ll want to know more.’

One of the consequences of the series’ wide release on television and in cinemas, says Watson, is that ‘Canadian image and myth is now being considered as fit material for movies and dramatization’.

Scully says the productions have attracted some of the country’s best directors and craftspeople.

Quebecers who have been involved in Heritage Minutes include Richard Ciupka, Francois Labonte and Richard Martin.

On the English side, directors from the National Film Board and Red Ochre Productions in St. John’s, Nfld. have been used along with commercial directors from The Partners’ Film Company in Toronto, among them Greg Sheppard and Bronwen Hughes. After a suggestion from Toronto-based director/ producer Norman Jewison, Holly Dale was hired to direct two Minutes.

The 40th spot in the series, an entry on the rcmp, was recently shot in British Columbia and directed by Partners’ Matthew Vibert.

The producers are promoting a ‘double-shoot’ approach for many of the Heritage Minutes, which results in savings of 40%, according to Scully.

Prime sponsors are the CRB Foundation, Canada Post, Power Broadcasting and the Weston Foundation. Scully says he expects to see more sponsors lining up in the near future.

Watson says Canadian business is being asked to demonstrate its enthusiasm for the country by getting involved as sponsors, even in a small way: ‘What we’re saying to Canadian corporations who might not have pockets deep enough to come in and finance a whole round is, `Why don’t you come in and put your name on a Minute?’ ‘

cbc will launch the new round of Heritage Minutes with a one-hour special in September. Radio-Canada will follow suit in December.

In addition, the Heritage Minutes are the centrepiece of a new 13 half-hour series called Just a Minute. Hosted by Prime Time News’ Pamela Wallin, and produced for Newsworld, the series will also air on CBC, says Watson.

The Heritage Minutes are offered to broadcasters free of charge and are classified as both drama and 150% Canadian content by the crtc. LRB