As American politicians fumble around in an effort to bring health care to those who don’t have it, Canada’s system is being looked upon as an example.

Depending on which side of the issue you stand, the example varies from positive to negative, but the fact that remains that Canada’s unversial health care system, impefections or not, speaks volumes for its citizens’ willingness to care for one another.

This week’s Heritage Minute takes us back to 1937 and the small village of Myrnam, Alberta, where a young girl couldn’t be saved because the three beds in the local “service station” that acted as a hospital were all full. This led to an agreement within the town for its people to build and maintain a hospital that would be open to everyone.

Robert Baldwin would later convince LaFontaine to take public office in Toronto, planting the seed for French-British cooperation that carries on to this day — despite some hiccups along the way.

“Canada’s existence owes much to the partnership of two moderate reformers: Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin,” Historica Dominion writes. “By the end of the 1840s, Baldwin and LaFontaine had succeeded in convincing the British government that legislative power should rest in the hands of the elected assembly of the colony. Moreover, their historical compromise showed that French and English Canadians could work together to solve their political problems.”

Modest contributions poured in and people gave all they could afford, Historica writes. “Others volunteered to work for free. At the end of the meeting, the community had $8000, enough to begin building the hospital.

“On July 28, 1938 the hospital was completed. Four years later, the community decided to provide all medical services, except hospitalization, for free, Hospitalization cost $2.00/day.”

Myrnam is one of the handful of local versions of community supported health care that eventually created Canada’s Medicare system in 1966.

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every Thursday on COTW.

Enjoy.

The spirit of Canadian unity is in the air as the 2010 Winter Olympics come down the home stretch, and nowhere is it more evident than in the apparent closeness and acceptance of French-Canadian athletes, including skier Alexandre Bilodeau, who won the nation’s first gold medal on home soil, and figure skater Joannie Rochette, who captivated the world with her brave performance Tuesday night just two days after her mother’s sudden death.

But much of Canada’s union is credited to a couple of politicians from the mid 1800s: Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin.

This week’s Heritage Minute whisks us back to 1841, when LaFontaine preached a message of non-violence even when his French-Canadians supporters were blocked from the voting polls and deterred from casting their ballots for him in his run for political office. He lost the election, but his message endured.

Robert Baldwin would later convince LaFontaine to take public office in Toronto, planting the seed for French-British cooperation that carries on to this day — despite some hiccups along the way.

“Canada’s existence owes much to the partnership of two moderate reformers: Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin,” Historica Dominion writes. “By the end of the 1840s, Baldwin and LaFontaine had succeeded in convincing the British government that legislative power should rest in the hands of the elected assembly of the colony. Moreover, their historical compromise showed that French and English Canadians could work together to solve their political problems.”

This week’s Heritage Minute covers quite a bit of ground, starting with the 1841 election in which LaFontaine kept his supporters from responding to violence with more violence, and ending with a historic union between LaFontaine and Baldwin that many believe set the unified nation on its course for the future.

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every Thursday on COTW.

Enjoy.

After all the waiting, longing, and hoping for a gold medal to be won on Canadian soil, it has already happened three times in the first week of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.

All told, the Canadian flag has been hoisted above the medal podium seven times, with three silver medals and a bronze factored into the mix.

So this seems as good a time as any to take a look back at 1964 with this week’s Heritage Minute and see the origins of the Canadian flag we know and love.

“The creation of a new flag stirred a national debate. Many Canadians were strongly attached to the Red Ensign, the British Union Jack and Canadian coat-of-arms on a red field. It had been used, officially and unofficially, for generations. For many veterans and their families, it was the banner under which Canada had gone to war,” Historica Dominion writes.

This week’s Heritage Minute comes from the perspective of John Matheson, a Member of Parliament who was on the committee to choose a new flag that would symbolize Canada. It took 41 meetings spent sifting through some 2,000 designs to come up with the final result, a single red maple leaf on a white background with two red bars on either side. It was voted on December 1964 and Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed it on Jan. 28, 1965.

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every Thursday on COTW.

Enjoy.

The Winter Olympics are nearly upon us, and if you’ve been wondering to yourself what the logo is all about, please allow this week’s Heritage Minute to explain.

The Inukshuk, a human-looking figure made of stones piled on top of each other, is a symbol used by the Inuits to convey to others that people have been there. The Inukshuks marked potentially good hunting and fishing spots and provided some shelter.

The choice of this indigenous icon as a symbol for the Olympics has been a somewhat controversial one, but it’s now accepted that it pays tribute to the statue that stands at Vancouver’s English Bay.

This week’s Heritage Minute looks at a Mountie helping an Inuit family work on an Inukshuk.

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every Thursday on COTW.

Enjoy.

The Bluenose, a fishing schooner that took on iconic status in the 1920s and ’30s, came out of Nova Scotia in 1921 in hopes of returning the International Fishermen’s Trophy and was successful in taking and retaining the title for 17 years.

The Bluenose made one last stand in 1938, taking on an American ship that proved the biggest threat to the Bluenose’s winning streak. The boats were tied 2-2 in a best-of-five series and the Bluenose was suffering from damages. Capt. Angus J. Walters is said to have pleaded with the boat, “One more time old girl, just one more time.”

The boat came through, winning the final race by three minutes and recording an average speed of 14.15 knots, the fastest pace ever recorded over a fixed course by a canvased vessel in the history of sailing.

This week’s Heritage Minute looks at that final race and recounts the Bluenose’s tremendous send-off. The Bluenose, which was a working fishing boat through and through, met its end on Jan. 28, 1946, capsizing off the coast of Haiti.

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every Thursday on COTW.

Enjoy.

John Cabot, an Italian explorer whose real name was Giovanni Caboto, deserves much of the credit for finding what would later become known as the new world. Sailing across the Atlantic under the sponsorship of England’s King Henry VII, he landed upon Newfoundland in 1497.

Perhaps even more importantly, Cabot found fish — specifically cod — that would help feed the world for more than five centuries. Yes, 500 years.

During one of Cabot’s voyages, he and his crew came upon schools of cod so thick they were said to have slowed the speed of the ship.

This week’s Heritage Minute highlights this trip and Cabot’s recognition of the importance of his fishy discovery as he reported back to the English king. As Historica Dominica, the keeper of these Heritage Minutes, notes, “Now, over 500 years since Cabot’s first voyage, we have to recognize the sad depletion of the cod fishery that seemed, in Cabot’s time, to be infinite.”

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every Thursday on COTW.

Enjoy.

To learn more about the depletion of the North West Atlantic cod fishery, check out this Wikipedia article.

In the spirit of Martin Luther King Day on Monday, this week’s Canadian Heritage Minute takes a look at a Canadian activist who took a non-violent approach to forcing change and encouraging his people to co-exist with those in power.

Etienne Parent was a journalist early in his life and he used the power of the pen to make his case be heard for the French-Canadians in Lower Canada, which eventually became Quebec.

Even though some of his fellow Canadiens at times considered him a traitor, Parent was jailed by the English governor, and he continued to run his newspaper, Le Canadien, from prison.

This week’s Heritage Minute takes a look at the significance of Parent’s work in those years and how it influenced Quebec’s revolution years later.

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every Thursday on COTW.

Enjoy.

Last week, we let you in on the little secret that Superman is actually half-Canadian, in a manner of speaking. Well, curl up with a bucket of honey for this sweet revelation.

This week’s Canadian Heritage Moment takes us across the pond to London in early World War I, where where a young Canadian soldier was heading home and having to leave his beloved black bear behind. Lt. Harry Colebourne had bought the bear in Ontario and named it Winnie, after his hometown of Winnipeg. He had to leave it behind, though, and the black bear made a new home at the London Zoo.

A few years later, A.A. Milne had a young son who took a liking to the bear, and Milne wrote some stories about a bear based on Winnie at the zoo. The bear in the stories would be named, “Winnie the Pooh.”

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every Wednesday on COTW.

Enjoy.

As if Jack Bauer and Capt. James T. Kirk weren’t enough, it turns out another American icon is actually, at least partially, Canadian.

This week’s Canadian Heritage Moment whisks us back to Cleveland, Ohio, where a young Joe Shuster was boarding a train to his hometown of Toronto and telling a woman named Lois all about his wild idea of a strong man in a cape and tights.

That strong man turned out to be Superman, and Shuster (who was born in Toronto but moved to Cleveland when he was 10 years old, went on to draw the comic strip with his writing partner, American Jerry Siegel, whom he’d met at school in Cleveland.

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every Wednesday on COTW.

Enjoy.

As you watch reports from around the world, with celebrations happening from time zone to time zone as the clock strikes 12, keep in mind that the standardization of time zones was brought to you by a Canadian.

Sir Sandford Fleming was an engineer and railroad builder who grew frustrated with the lack of consistent time being kept around the world. No one believed that he could get the entire world to agree to a standard set of time zones that would be recognized the world over, but Sandford Fleming did just that, and he’s recognized in this week’s Canadian Heritage Minute.

Most everyone is indeed on board with Fleming’s time zones, but some places — including Newfoundland in Canada — stray here and there by going a half-hour off the standard time zones. But, really, who can explain what those Newfies are up to half the time, anyway?

Heritage Minutes are 60-second short films that are heavily produced and immensely informative, and are shown in between some TV shows in Canada — and they’re amazing. We’re planning to bring you a “Heritage Minute” every week on COTW.

Enjoy.