A new team will enter the tent to host season four of CBC audience favourite THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW. Comedians, actors, writers and Second City alumni Alan Shane Lewis and Ann Pornel will join returning judges Bruno Feldeisen and Kyla Kennaley to cheer on 10 new Canadian amateur bakers. Based on the hit British format and produced by Proper Television, production on the fourth season is currently underway in Toronto for broadcast and streaming on CBC and CBC Gem in winter 2021.
Canadians had a healthy appetite for season three of THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW, with the series reaching 1.2 million viewers each week on CBC TV and ranking as CBC Gem’s most-watched factual entertainment series during the 2019/20 season. Audiences looking to satisfy their craving in advance of the new season can catch up on the first three seasons on CBC Gem.
Based on the beloved British format, THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW brings together 10 amateur bakers from across the country to compete in a series of themed culinary challenges that celebrate their diverse backgrounds, families and communities. Competitors on the homegrown series have the opportunity to go up against Canada’s best bakers, while also competing against themselves as they strive to achieve their personal best. Each episode features three rounds including the Signature Bake, the Technical Bake and the Show Stopper. After the bakes are tasted and critiqued, the judges decide who will become the week’s Star Baker and who will be sent home, with the final three bakers competing for The Great Canadian Baking Show title.
THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW is produced by Proper Television in association with CBC and Love Productions. The executive producers are Lesia Capone and Cathie James, and the series producer is Marike Emery.
I’m a huge fan of music documentaries and count Soundbreaking, It Might get Loud, Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage and Sonic Highways among my favourites. I’ll add Amplify to the mix.
We spoke to Shane Belcourt about how Amplify came about, and what he hopes viewers will experience as they watch it.
What made you create Amplify?
Shane Belcourt: The producers that I work with wanted to make a music documentary series. The default for that kind of music documentary series is usually the biography series, ‘Here’s the musician, here’s what they’ve done.’ I mean, sure I like them, but I want to watch a TV show that has some artistry behind it, that has some kind of uniqueness that I can’t get anywhere else. I was quite inspired by Dave Grohl’s HBO documentary series, Sonic Highways, as well as the Netflix series, a very popular one, Chef’s Table.
I thought, ‘There’s something about both of these documentaries, the way that they’re structured and the pacing and the points that they bring out.’ But the other big one was when you think about going to musicians and saying, ‘Hey, you’re great. Tell me why you’re great. Rolling,’ they’re going to be like, ‘Uh, no thanks.’
Shane Belcourt
But if you said, ‘Hey, what’s something that you’ve read recently or thought about, or something in our Indigenous world that you’re really excited to explore and think about that’s really shaped you? Will you tell me about that?’ And, of course, every musician is like, ‘Oh yeah, hey, you should read this and I love this part and that part. And here’s what it means to me.’ Through that micro focus, you get the macro feeling of who this person really is. So you get the biography, you get the feeling of who this person is through focusing on one thing that they’re excited to talk about.
One of the things that struck me were the times you’re showing a barn in a field or some flowers. Clearly that was a conscious decision on your part to make this different.
SB: Yeah. I’ve got to really tip my hat to the broadcaster, APTN. I sold them originally from the lookbook and from the pitch deck. I said, ‘Listen. I want to do something that has the pacing, like Chef’s Table, that’s very meditative, that takes time to linger on a shot. We’re in no rush.’
And to their credit, they said, ‘Great.’ One of my friends has this great saying. He’s actually musician. He said, ‘When the world runs, walk slow. When the world goes slow, start running. If you want to stand out, do the opposite.’ And so I think that there’s a history now of documentaries. There’s so many good documentaries. And I’m inspired by the visual treatment that we’re all pushing to.
How did you decide on the songwriters you were going to include?
SB: I work really closely with producer Michelle St. John, and she knows everybody. She’s great. We thought, ‘OK, well, we know what the recipe of the show is: Songwriter + inspiration = an episode.’ So we thought, ‘OK, well, who are 13 songwriters that we’d love to spend time with who we know are articulate, and also a mix between somebody who’s known like iskwÄ“ and someone who’s less known like Lacey Hill?’ We definitely wanted to make a list that had a lot of Indigenous female performers. So that was also a juggling act. You make your big list.
Author Robin Wall Kimmerer
And I would say 80 per cent agreed right off. We called them. They’re like, ‘We love this idea. Totally interested. We’re in.’ And while we made that list of songwriters, we also then made a parallel list of what director would be perfect to work with that songwriter.
One of the things that I enjoyed is you had each person introduce themselves in their Indigenous language. SB: Yeah. So much of welcoming and greeting yourself and introducing yourself to the space or to the people who you’re sharing that space with is to express who you are and where you’re from and what your community and nation is. Who holds you, what group has brought you forward as opposed to, ‘I’m this isolated person named Dale or Bob or whatever.’ That was something that we wanted, too. It just made sense to do that. And the other thing too, is that the musicality of the language was something that we just love to hear. It just gives them a little flavour of something that just to me, sounds a little sweeter and pulls the audience in a little further as they read the subtitles, but hear the sound for most of the people who don’t speak Ojibway.
When people tune in and watch Amplify, what are you hoping that they do? Do you want them to hit up iTunes and look for this music and start Googling these artists and the people who inspired them?
SB: That’s just it. You just nailed it right there. The hope that someone watching the show is that for a half-hour TV block, they get to sit down and be transported into a place that has these unusual and new characters and voices and sounds. And then at the end of it, they’re just thinking a couple of things. One is, for something like in the pilot, ‘I have to go buy a copy of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book. I want to read it.’ That’s what you hope because it’s such a great book. And then, ‘Oh, I want to check out Cheryl L’Hirondelle. I love the sound of her stuff. It’s so interesting.’ I’m someone who as an artist, I guess ultimately whenever I watch a great movie or a great show, I want to make something. It inspires me to be creative and do what I do. So I hope, ultimately, people watch it and go, ‘I want to sit down and write a song,’ or whatever it is that they do to get out there and just be creative.
Amplify airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on APTN.
John Catucci vividly recalls the moment COVID-19 threw production of the second season of Big Food Bucket List into disarray. They were filming in Georgia, and things got serious really fast.
“We were in Savannah just before the lockdown happened,” Catucci recalls. “Savannah has one of the biggest St. Patrick’s Day parties in the country. We got there just the week before that was going to happen. And then everything changed. When it changed, it changed fast.” And, rather than fly back to Canada, he and the crew piled into a car and hit the road for an 11-hour-plus drive back to Canada via Pittsburgh.
Returning Saturday at 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network Canada, Big Food Bucket List once again finds Catucci travelling North America—pre- and during the pandemic—making and tasting dishes in joints you just have to check out.
You’re still filming now. I guess you’re not walking into a restaurant with a restaurant full of people.
John Catucci: We’re following the production protocols. The hand sanitizers are just pumping nonstop all day, making sure masks are on until the last second, until we start shooting and stuff like that. The crew is wearing masks all day. People are getting tested. They’re trying to stay as safe as possible.
Has there ever been anything that you’ve tasted that you didn’t like and had to fake it?
JC: I think I had clam poutine once, years back. And it just didn’t work for me.
For you, yeah.
JC: And that’s a good point. For me, right? I think it was something that I had to learn on this show is that you’re not going to love everything on the menu. Sometimes you as a customer, you ordered wrong, and that’s not on the restaurant. That’s on you. I remember going out to dinner one night and everybody got steaks. I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to do the fish. I’m going to do the halibut. It looks good.’ It just didn’t hit. And again, it’s not their fault.
For Season 2, you went to places like Portland, Winnipeg, you were down in Florida, Seattle, Brooklyn, a wide variety of places you’ve been to. You must be really pinching yourself to get the chance to have gone to some of these cities.
JC: Portland’s got a great food scene, Seattle’s got a great food scene. San Diego’s got great food, that was great too. I love Manhattan. I love going to New York. I love going to Brooklyn, that vibe that happens in that city is unlike any other city in the world. It’s got grit, and it’s got this edge and it’s got this energy that, there’s a rush, there’s a bustle that you don’t find anywhere else. And I’ve never had a bad meal in New York. Never once. Restaurants can’t afford to have bad meals there because there are so many restaurants in there that if you have a bad meal and somebody hears about it, you’re done.
This industry has been hit hard by COVID-19. Do you think it can come back?
JC: I think it can come back. I think it might come back in a different way. Can we go back to sitting down in a restaurant full of other people? I hope so. I really miss that. I miss that energy that happens in there. I miss sitting down at a table and looking over and seeing what is that person having? Oh, that’s coming by, what’s that? I miss that. That was one of the things that I loved about going out to restaurants.
It’s not just a place where you eat. It’s the connection that it has with the people around them. And it’s the connection that it has to the community. And it’s the neighbourhood that sometimes grows around a restaurant. People come in to your restaurant, but then they go to this store and they go to that store, and they go to the paper store, and they were the card store, and they go to the park. That’s how important a restaurant is.
You’re very active on Instagram. Your garden this year has been incredible.
JC: The company is called The Good Seed. Melissa Cameron helps design and create gardens for small spaces, whatever space you have. But my backyard is a small Toronto backyard and she was able to help me design the garden space, what I could grow, and what grows together with what. And even though I’ve got a limited space of two raised beds in a little side garden, the amount of stuff I was able to grow this year was incredible. And again, it comes a lot with her knowledge and this spring, summer, I was able to be home and tend it.
For the past years, I’ve been on the road every spring, summer because that’s when we shoot our show, but I’ve been able to slow everything down and watch this garden just create food for my family to eat. And every morning, I’d go out there with my espresso and I’d water the garden, and I’d see how the tomatoes were doing and how the beans were doing, and my zucchini and my carrots. The garden this year was just spectacular. It was one of the places where I found solace. It was one of those places that helped with my mental health, was able to ground me. There’s nothing like putting your fingers in soil to connect you with the earth. It was a beautiful thing. And I was so, so happy.
Big Food Bucket List airs Saturdays at 8 and 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network Canada.
Beginning Thursday, October 8 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, HISTORY® offers an inside look into the logging industry through the eyes of a rambunctious sawmill company. In Big Timber (10×60) logger Kevin Wenstob and his team, go to extremes to keep the family sawmill, and their way of life, alive. Deep in the heart of Vancouver Island, Kevin has invested $1.5 million on a remote timber claim high up the steep, rugged slopes of Klitsa Mountain. Home to some of the best lumber in the world, Kevin supplies his customers with the top-quality red and yellow cedar, fir, and rare hemlock that cannot be found anywhere else.
The team logs on rugged mountain cliffs where slopes reach angles as steep as 60 degrees. The weather is unforgiving, turning from scorching hot to torrential rain in a heartbeat, and snow comes early at this altitude. On top of everything else, Kevin’s equipment continues to get weathered by the harsh conditions and he is constantly concerned about equipment breakdowns.
With a thousand truckloads of timber waiting up top for him, he could make millions if he succeeds in getting them all down. However, it’s a huge gamble, and if he fails he could lose everything his family has worked for, he risks a hefty fine for any logs he leaves behind. It’s a constant battle to complete his mission and stay alive, but they’re up for the fight.
Producer, Writer, Director Jason Friesen of Chasing Pictures Inc., and Creator/Writer Tim Johnson will premiere the second season of Nations at War, a documentary TV series on September 19 on APTN. Friesen (Health Nutz) is a BC Metis filmmaker; and Johnson is a writer and story editor with a BA in History from Nova Scotia.
For centuries, the mass migration of peoples across North America has reshaped the face of the continent. From the 17th century migrations of the Ojibwe, to the 19th-century flood of American settlers. Standing in their way were nations who battled to defend their ancient homes.
For the majority of human history, North America’s population was entirely Indigenous in its character. Then in the early 1600s Europeans began to establish colonies along the Atlantic coast. These settlements became gateways through which millions of people would eventually flow west, creating incessant demand for new land.
However, these foreigners were not the only migrants creating chaos as they claimed new homes across North America. Nations like the Ojibwe and Lakota were already on the move. Their migration created a domino effect which provoked conflict and cultural change, as peoples who already called the west home fought to defend their territory.
From the Atlantic to the Pacific, the wars created by mass migration would transform North America into the continent we know today. Nations at War is hosted by David H. Lyle (Arrow, Arctic Air); and features Simon Fraser Professor of Archeology, Dr. Eldon Yellowhorn.
Nations at War is produced by Chasing Pictures Inc. with the participation of the Canada Media Fund, and in association with APTN.
