After seeing Palmer & Mike (our two newborn Stars from the North) being extras on a kids TV show, it seems like TV productions are getting more and more interested in the small Northern Ontario communities/residents.
Assuming there’s a lot of people from Northern Ontario reading this blog on a regular basis, I thought this might interest a few. Here is a press release about a new TV show starring Hearst in one of their episode. (read bellow)
-Sudbury, Ontario, le mardi 17 juin 2008 – Le samedi 21 juin, la Première Chaîne de Radio-Canada présente une émission spéciale mettant en vedette la ville de Hearst et ses habitants.
LES INVINCIBLES GAULOIS DE HEARST raconte avec humour l’improbable histoire de cette ville ontarienne où pratiquement tous les citoyens vivent en français malgré les centaines de kilomètres qui les séparent du Québec.
Pourquoi cette ville de 6000 habitants a-t-elle sa propre université, son conseil des arts, son journal, sa radio, sa librairie, ses festivals? Pourquoi dit-on qu’à une certaine époque, elle comptait le plus haut pourcentage de millionnaires au pays? Pourquoi affirme-t-on que c’est une ville western et qu’elle est la capitale mondiale de l’orignal? Pourquoi y sert-on des rôties tartinées de beurre dans un authentique restaurant chinois? Et que fait donc Hearst sur la carte météo du Téléjournal de Radio-Canada?
L’histoire de Hearst est racontée par l’animateur ÉRIC ROBITAILLE, en compagnie de ses nombreux invités dont GREGORY CHARLES, JOCELYNE BLOUIN, JEAN FUGÈRE, JEAN-MARC DALPÉ et plusieurs «invincibles Gaulois» aux surnoms surréalistes… Ne ratez pas LES INVINCIBLES GAULOIS DE HEARST, le 21 juin, sur les ondes de la Première Chaîne, partout au pays!-
For those who are not familiar with French, it seems like CBC is now interested in the mystery of small francophone towns located in Ontario.
My first reaction: Cool! For once they’re going to talk about us somewhere!
But what caught my attention the most are the questions they’re asking themselves about my hometown. They seem to wonder why is that small town of 6 000 population has the highest percentage of millionaires in the country. Of course, there are plenty of factors to take in consideration, but two of them are worth to specify here. One thing they might need to mention is that, a few years ago, Hearst was the town that had the biggest percentage of illegal drugs in Ontario. Would there be a correlation between drugs and money in the town? Some might think it’s a possibility.
Here’s something I always asked myself on that issue: Would the people, including the police department, be afraid of busting the drug dealers knowing it would bring the economy way down? I just remember a case when I was a bit younger where everybody in town knew this supermarket owner had a big drug dealing industry going on top his supermarket roof. If the cops would have busted that owner, everybody knew the other supermarket would have no competition anymore and would therefore take advantage of the population by putting their prices way up. And knowing that that owner wasn’t the only one owning a business as well as having a drug industry on the side, everybody kept their mouth shut.
An other reason why the town would have that many millionaires is the fact that the town is so excluded from big cities. We therefore need to have our own pharmacy, radio, newspaper, University …etc. And since the population is not very big, well, half of the population owns those businesses and gets rich out of them!
The next question the TV production is trying to resolve definitely put a smile on my face: “Why do they serve toasts in their local authentic Chinese restaurant?”. Really, I’m not sure about the real explanation to this, I guess the owner thought it would make people full faster… I just remember when the first time I made Chinese food at home, The Palmer didn’t understand why I would always make toasts as well. I thought all Chinese food came with toasts…..
Anyways, just to say that this show should be interesting. Wonder what kind of answers they will come up with.
LES INVINCIBLES GAULOIS DE HEARST
Saturday 21st June, on Radio-Canada (CBC)
at 6:00p.m.