Four-time Gemini winner Michael Maclear of Toronto-based Screenlife will executive produce a two-hour television documentary for a&e’s The History Channel based on Pierre Berton’s best-selling book Niagara – A History of the Falls.

The doc will be shot on location in Niagara Falls and will begin production in April. Rachel Low (Anatomy of Love) will produce and direct.

Niagara, premiering this fall on History, will chronicle the history and culture of the natural attraction using archival footage and interviews with local personalities and historians, including Berton. The feature-length doc will also explore human-interest stories surrounding the falls – examining how tightrope-walking, barrel-bound daredevils, scientists and engineers have sought to harness Niagara Falls’ power.

A&E Networks owns the worldwide video and television rights to the project. No Canadian broadcast window has been announced.

– Gabourie’s Angel flying through post

Writer/director Mitch Gabourie is currently posting a Bravo!fact- and Kodak Canada-sponsored short film about Cory Ditchburn, the only woman photojournalist to make it to the front lines in wwii.

Titled Angel Walk and based on the Katherine Govier novel of the same name, the film will be cut in two lengths – an eight-minute version for Bravo! and a 14-minute film for tvontario, which has the second window.

Angel Walk was shot over three days in 35mm black and white by dop Barry Parrell and utilized locations such as Toronto’s Union Station, the Lakeshore Pavilion and a dilapidated old mill near Guelph that stood in for a bombed-out Italian cathedral. Daniel Caloz produced for prodco Mediatique.

With production designer Andrew Ward and wardrobe designer Patricia Venema giving the shoot an authentic period feel, the film uses love letters exchanged between Canadian Ditchburn and English painter Albert Bloom as a narrative, with visual scenes of the photographer’s war experiences running underneath.

Gabourie, who is also a commercial director with Toronto’s The Partners’ Film Company, says he hopes to hit the festival circuit with Angel Walk later this year.

Meanwhile, casting remains the final piece to the puzzle that will greenlight production on Gabourie’s script Comanchee St., which is being packaged by Peter Hoffman’s l.a.-based Seven Arts.

Notables such as Jon Voigt, Skeet Ulrich and Dennis Leary have been approached for roles in the $3.5-million to $6-million thriller set in a Montreal Gypsy neighborhood, with a tentative September shoot in Montreal.

The prolific Gabourie is slated to direct Comanchee St. and is also currently shopping two other scripts, Troubadour – ‘a jazz Field of Dreams picture’ – and The Knife and Gun Club – a caper/sting movie about the paparazzi.

And look for Gabourie to direct a currently unmentionable pilot for abc in Toronto this summer. More about this in an upcoming issue.

Somehow during his hectic schedule, Gabourie found the time to pen the family mow Wild Hearts with screenwriter Donald Martin, which has been optioned by Calgary-based Nomadic Pictures.

Incidentally, Toronto-based Martin is planning to move to l.a. in the fall and is negotiating a development deal with Showtime Networks in the u.s. on a project called Caro Brown: An American Heroine.

Martin reports that Showtime’s Jerry Offsay had one condition to greenlighting development on the true story project about the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who exposed a fraudulent Texas governor’s race involving Lyndon B. Johnson. Offsay says the film needs an Oscar-winning actress for the lead role.

Due no doubt to Martin’s charm, Sissy Spacek is now attached to the production, slated for a Texas shoot in the spring of 1999.

– McGowan takes `inciting incident’ Over The Falls

Michael Souther’s third edition of the screenplay reading series ‘inciting incident,’ held monthly in Toronto, took place mid-March at The Cameron House and saw an a-list cast reading director/writer Michael McGowan’s (My Dog Vincent) new project Over The Falls.

Among the actors reading the black comedy were Gordon Pinsent, Eugene Lipinski, Elisa Moolecherry and Brian Heighton. Shift Magazine editor and host of CBC Newsworld show Hot Type, Evan Solomon, acted as narrator. Veteran casting director Robin Cook (The Newsroom, Net Worth, More Tears) assembled the cast.

The reading attracted a number of industry notables and scored McGowan a meeting with Telefilm Canada to discuss development money. Toronto’s Oasis Pictures is now repping My Dog Vincent and reports sales to various foreign territories post afm, putting the $150,000 privately financed film into the black.

McGowan says he intends to go the more traditional Canadian route in financing Over The Falls, with hopes of accessing more public funding and having a distributor on board before going to camera.

‘I think the reaction was good but it also made me realize the problems with the script,’ says the 31-year-old former journalist, who financed My Dog Vincent with a bond trading friend who secured funds from wealthy business types seduced by the sexiness of the film world. ‘It was a harrowing experience.’

While doing a rewrite, McGowan is seeking an experienced exec producer for Over The Falls, which he budgets at $3 million, and is now looking at Regina as a potential location and setting.

Meanwhile, the inciting incident series, which has featured such notables as directors Jerry Ciccoritti and Sheldon Larry and actor Sarah Polley, is always looking for script submissions from directors, producers and writers.

Following a trip to the Big Apple earlier this month, Souther says the series has formed an alliance with the well-known Fifth Night workshop. The Toronto workshop is also looking for additional sponsors. For more info visit www.webspotting.com/inciting/htm.

– It’s a retro thing

Game show guru Sidney M. Cohen of Toronto-based Super People Productions is still waiting on a firm second season renewal from History Television for a ‘bigger and better version’ of the quiz show Time Chase, but in the meantime he’s resurrecting a couple of old favorites.

Cohen will be at mip-tv with Montreal-based partner Distraction trying to drum up interest in a revival of game show The Mad Dash, which ran on ctv and in syndication from 1979 to 1985, and Thrill of a Lifetime, which ran in primetime on ctv from 1981-87.

Cohen also says he’ll be selling the franchise or format for both shows to various foreign-language territories.

Currently Cohen is redeveloping and updating the formats of the two shows and is hoping to begin production on a Canadian version of one or both in the near future.

‘Tapes of the old shows are being used as sales vehicles, and we’ve already had some strong interest from some European territories,’ he says.

With everything old being new again, the timing couldn’t be better to bring back the popular Mad Dash, says Cohen, adding: ‘I think we’ll try and keep it as low tech and high fun as possible.’

A new gardening show and a consumer/lifestyle show titled Prosperity about ’empowering people to make a better living’ are among the vehicles Cohen is currently pitching to likely specialty suspects.

– Hey scores development $s

Michaelle McLean’s new production company Hey Films has been approved for development funding from Telefilm Canada for the feature film Lucky Charm.

The dark coming-of-age tale from screenwriter Penny Gay has Jeremy Hindle attached as director, with Semi Chellas on board as story editor. Gay, Hindle and Chellas most recently collaborated on the short film Boot of Leather.

Lucky Charm producer McLean says she left her position as head of creative affairs at Telefilm to pursue her own interests as a consultant and producer. Lucky Charm is the first project to emerge from Hey, which McLean says is in the early stages of pursuing long-form dramas for theatrical or television distribution, as well as considering series and non-fiction material.