Excerpt from John Doyle’s Weekend Viewing
Extraordinary Canadians
Sunday, 8:30 p.m., CITY-TV
This series, one of those all-too-rare explorations of Canadian history and culture on TV these days, has prominent Canadian figures dwelling for 30 minutes on the life and achievements of important figures from our past. On this one, Adrienne Clarkson looks at Norman Bethune, a figure who might well be considered a lightning rod in a culture-war perspective on Canadian history. He was, after all, devoted to socialized medicine and saved lives during revolutions in Spain and China. Later programs in the series (which is allied with a series of Penguin books going by the same title; the series also airs on Biography Channel Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.) feature Margaret MacMillan on Stephen Leacock and David Adams Richards on Lord Beaverbrook. Next spring, in another of those all-too-rare moves, the series will air in multiple languages – Mandarin, Italian, and Hindi – on OMNI Television.