Heritage Minute

Heritage Minutes, also known officially as Historica Minutes: History by the Minute, are sixty-second short films, each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. They appear frequently on Canadian television and in cinemas before movies. The minutes were first introduced on March 31, 1991 as part of a one-off heavily-promoted history quiz show hosted by Rex Murphy. The thirteen original short films were broken up and run between shows on CBC Television and CTV. The continued broadcast of the Minutes and the production of new ones was pioneered by Charles Bronfman's CRB Foundation (subsequently the The Historica Dominion Institute), Canada Post (with Bell Canada being a later sponsor) Power Broadcasting (now Power Corporation of Canada), and the National Film Board. They were devised, developed and largely narrated (as well as scripted) by noted Canadian broadcaster Patrick Watson, while the producer of the series was Robert Guy Scully. In 2009 Historica merged with The...