Canadian Heritage Minutes: Exploring Canada's History

What are Canadian Heritage Minutes?

Visit the online Canadian Encyclopedia and read the article by Emily Reid about the Heritage Minutes. You can access it here:

Visit Historica Canada at where you can view the Heritage Minutes. There are nearly 100 of these one minute documentaries about people, events and places in Canada’s history. You don’t have to view every one. Instead, explore through the list and view those that catch your interest, focusing on those within the time period of our course. You can also use the “view by category” function to narrow your focus. The idea is to get a sense of what minutes currently exist. You can also view the Heritage Minutes directly on YouTube here:

Explore the course content in our course for all 9 units (this will mean you reading ahead in our course schedule which is fine) and consider what you have learned about Canadian history and identify a person/people/place/or event that you discovered through our course or that our course made you think of that you feel deserves a Heritage Minute. You CANNOT identify the exact topic of an existing Heritage Minute or any other documentaries on the historica site such as the longer biographies called “The Canadians” or documentaries in the “Think like a Historian” series. You must identify a new and original topic and it must fit into the time frame of our course (1860s-1980s—see above for more information on choosing a time period). If your assignment does not fulfill these requirements, it will receive a zero.

Conduct research on your chosen person/people/place/or event. The idea is to use a broad range of reliable and academic sources to gain a well rounded perspective. Below you will find suggested research tools:

the online Canadian Encyclopedia found here:

Use the Conestoga College Library Services, particularly the database “Academic Search Complete” for academic sources. If you are off campus you will need to sign in to the library services using your student number.