The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 85

Cover Story by Paul Challen Me sift omidleoirs aoudl Ohf Canada! It's time for a birthday bonanza of TV patriotism vr- A y1 Tith me fireworks, multi- cultural festivals and parades in celebration of Yob Canada Day this weekend, parking yourself in front of the tube might not be the most ambitious way of commemorating oar nation's 134th birthday. But it's a pretty hardy Canuck who can spend the entire weekend engaged in patriotic celebration and besides, a body needs to rest at some point. And while you're resting, you might as well catch some of the Canada Day action on the tube. (Check local listings for program times). CBC will be airing a pair of specials from Parliament Hill.

First up, Peter Mans-bridge, Alison Smith, Ron MacLean and Genevieve Borne will host a daytime special called Dreams Come True. It will feature performances by violin supergroup Barrage, members of the current cast of the musical Notre-Dame de Paris, singer Susan Aglukark and others. The show will also be simulcast on CBC Newsworld. In the evening, CBC is at it again you wouldn't tolerate anything less from our national broadcaster, would you? This time, it's another musical gala called The Thrill on the Hill, headlined by a homecoming performance by Ottawa's mega-selling heroine of the pop-music world, Alanis Morissette. Her two-song Parliament Hill set will be Morissette's only Canadian appearance this summer, and she says that growing up in Ottawa, she can recall the throng of people who gathered there every July for the festivities.

The globe-travelling songstress has since formed her own notions of her home and native land. "I've always considered myself partly a citizen of Canada," she says in a telephone interview from Austria in the midst of a European tour. "And partly just a child of the Earth. But this is a great opportunity to recall how respectful and grateful I am for having grown up in a country with so many She'll be joined in Ottawa by many other notable Canadians, including world champion skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, astronauts Sylvie Paquette and Chris Had-field, and musical stars Ashley Maclsaac and Prairie Oyster. But celebrity mega-gatherings in the nation's capital aren't the only televised way to partake in Canada Day.

History Television is giving viewers two chances to see every episode of the recently concluded Pioneer Quest series. The specialty network will be showing the series, which features two couples struggling to survive in 1870s I TV Times Barrage (above): stringing us along; Gzowski: narrator conditions in Manitoba, in two eight-hour marathons. But if the Canada of the past isn't your cup of Red Rose tea, the weekend TV-bonanza also affords you the opportunity to take an in-depth look at our country in its present form. Peter Gzowski, that longtime observer of all things Canadian, narrates a new National Film Board of Canada documentary (airing Sunday on Discovery Channel) called Postcards from Canada. It makes use of a montage of aerial photography similar to the well-known 1967 documentary Helicopter to portray a wide array of Canadian people and places.

Any celebration of Canadian culture would be incomplete without a heavy dose of one of the genres that the country has made so famous around the world. We're talking about animation, and on Saturday evening, the all-cartoon network Teletoon will be launching three new shows to commemorate Canada's leadership on the animated-TV scene. Based on the popular Just series of books by Andy Griffiths, What's with Andy? is a series about a kid who just can't resist a practical joke. It's followed by Braceface, a show about a girl (voice provided by Alicia Silverstone) entering junior high school who discovers that her braces already a source of some embarrassment can pick up police radio signals and jump-start cars. Finally, there's an animated series for the 18 crowd, called underGRADS.

It revolves around four first-year college students who are trying to make sense of their new lives while keeping up their old friendships. Kevin Wright, Teletoon's vice-president of programming, says all three series are good examples of how Canadian animators have succeeded. "One of the messages we hope to get across," he says, "is that many young kids who watch our station have dreams of maybe creating their own animated shows one day. And what we're showing them with this kind of Canadian content, is that it's entirely realistic that they could do it".