The new Atlantic arm of Edmonton’s Great North Communications, Great North Atlantic, is producing six one-hour documentaries for the parent company’s 14-episode series Faces of History to run on History Television this fall.

Managing director of Great North Atlantic (Halifax) Bill Skerrett says some of the local historical subjects for the $200,000-per-episode series will include Rose Fortune, the first black female police officer in Canada, and Aida McCallum, an infamous Halifax madam who ran her brothel in the 1950s and ’60s catering to local politicians and visitors. Lulu Keating will write and direct the McCallum doc The Fortune script is penned by Silver Donald Cameron.

Skerrett is slated to direct an episode on Nova Scotia brush mogul Alfred Fuller and his eponymous company, while Halifax-based Triad Films’ Peter d’Entremont is writing and directing an episode about the original Blue Nose captain, Angus Walters.

D’Entremont says he will begin production on the Blue Nose and her captain’s story in early September with a scheduled wrap date of the end of the month.

Skerrett and partner Whitman Trecartin own and operate Great North Atlantic, giving Great North a national yet regional-based production company when combined with the Vancouver office, Great North Pacific, and the company’s Edmonton headquarters.

Great North Atlantic is currently posting Salt-water Buffalo, a one-hour documentary chronicling the ill-fated program to bring Prairie buffalo to Newfoundland to replace the diminishing caribou stock. Skerrett says director David Quinton shot the doc over the course of five years until last winter when the one remaining buffalo was killed when it fell off a cliff.

Salt-water Buffalo is scheduled to run on Discovery Channel sometime this season and Great North Releasing will be the worldwide distributor.

-Busy d’Entremont Scattering Seeds

Besides working on Great North’s Faces of History, d’Entremont hits to his hometown of Pubnico, n.s., on Aug. 9 to shoot a half-hour documentary reflecting his personal journeys and experiences as an Acadian.

D’Entremont was approached to write and direct the film by Toronto-based White Pine Pictures’ Peter Raymont, producer of the 13-part series The Scattering of Seeds that will explore the ethnic experiences of various Canadian film directors through commissioned half-hour films.

Director d’Entremont’s offering is the first to go into production for the tentative slate of films that is rumored to include Egyptian-born Atom Egoyan.

D’Entremont says he will lens the ‘comfortably budgeted’ project over five days. The Scattering of Seeds will run simultaneously this fall on History Television and a Canadian French-language broadcaster.

-Milgaard on hold

Despite recent dramatic developments in the case, Toronto-based Barna-Alper Productions’ $3-million mow Hard Times, The David Milgaard Story that was scheduled to shoot for 21 days in New Brunswick this summer has been postponed because the anticipated Telefilm Canada and ctcpf funding did not materialize.

‘We had made Telefilm aware that the dna testing (which exonerated Milgaard) was going through,’ says David Weaver, head of drama at Barna-Alper. The mow had a confirmed broadcast licence with ctv and Alliance was to be the distributor.

Bob Miller and his Fredericton-based company Atlantic Mediaworks were set to coproduce along with Martin Harbury of Bar Harbour Films in Toronto.

‘What a kick in the teeth,’ says Miller, who estimates the production would have pumped about $1.5 million into the fledgling industry in New Brunswick, which Weaver says was chosen as a location because of Film NB’s commitment to the maximum $350,000 equity investment and because of the province’s attractive tax credit and mentorship program.

Weaver stresses that ‘there is no villain here,’ and hopes to shoot The David Milgaard Story during Barna Alper’s next fiscal year.

Miller and Weaver are also currently developing an mow about right to die advocate Sue Rodriguez (see Ontario Scene, p. 16.)

-Bishop delivers

Halifax’s Charles Bishop Productions has just delivered the first episode of Foodessence to Life Network. The 26-episode, 30-minute documentary series which explores food’s history, its cultural significance and how the foods we eat reflect on who we are, is set to wrap shooting at the end of the month.

The premiere episode, narrated by series host and Newfoundland broadcaster Andrew Younghusband, will focus on the obsessive human relationship with chocolate.

Bishop is currently posting the half-hour drama Nan’s Taxi, coproduced with Torrential Pictures of Halifax as part of the CanWest Global Maritime Initiative. Set to air Aug. 30 on the Global system, the film is the brainchild of three Street Cents alumnae, actors Jonathon Torrence, Brian Heighton and director Mike Clattenburg.

-Changes make Cents

Speaking of Street Cents, the kids’ consumer show is gearing up for 18 episodes for season eight with a fresh look for the set courtesy of the new cbc studio on Bell Road in Halifax.

Budgeted at around $1 million for the season, last year’s cast will be returning to inform young ‘uns about the dangers of commercialism under the direction of Barbara Kennedy, who is now executive producer of the show, and senior producer Gavin McGarry. The new studio will also be home to Salter Street Films’ This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which also begins production in September.

-At press timeŠ

Production has commenced on season two of the Fogbound Films/ Topsail Entertainment/cbc series Black Harbour in Hubbards, n.s., with a per episode budget of $940,000. At press time, the producers were still trying to cast an actor to play ‘a young man with a dangerous past’ who catches the eye of actress Melanie Foley who plays Tasha, the eldest offspring of lead characters Nick (Geraint Wyn Davies) and Katherine (Rebecca Jenkins).

Producers Rick Haupt and John Davis of Eco-Nova MultiMedia in Halifax have just set sail for the Arctic in search of the lost ships of the Franklin Expedition. The idea is to produce two, hour-long docs for the 13-part Oceans of Mystery series for Discovery Channel. Set to air in the spring of ’98, the shows are budgeted at $1.5 million in total.