We here at Canadian of the Week might have fallen a bit behind on our one-time promise to resurface the classic Canadian Heritage Minutes, but we still love them.

And it appears we’re not alone. “Scara,” the venerable founder and editor of GhoulsonFilm.net and good friend of Canadian of the Week, ran into Seth Rogen’s longtime buddy and co-writer Evan Goldberg, who beamed with excitement at the mention of CanadianoftheWeek.com and our mutual love of the renowned Heritage Minutes.

“I contacted the government and asked if we could make new ones like three years ago,” Evan said. “Me, Michael Cera and Seth wanted to go up there and make new ones. We wanted to do part of our future heritage and try to do a thing where we get like Pamela Anderson, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers and Seth and Michael Cera — just get, like, every famous Canadian we can to do something like that. I’m still kind of into doing it.”

Scara and her morbid mind went straight to Dr. Wilder Penfield’s infamous “I smell burnt toast” bit.

“Burnt toast! Burnt toast?” Evan repeated. “I lived on Penfield Drive in Montreal. I lived outside the building of the man who came up with that. We’ve got a Chinese railroad worker episode … there’s more, burnt toast, the hockey mask one. Ah, those are the best.”

Yes, Evan. They are.

With spring training underway, it’s time to turn our attention to baseball. The Montreal Expos may be history, but Canada’s contribution to the sport isn’t limited to the departed Olympic Stadium residents and the Toronto Blue Jays.

This week’s Heritage Minute brings us back to 1946 and Montreal’s contribution to Jackie Robinson’s controversial breaking of the color line in Major League Baseball.

That year, Robinson played his first professional games with the Montreal Royals, the AAA minor-league affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

This video is a touch controversial because while it shows some of Robinson’s teammates displaying some discomfort with his place on the team, and shows the Royals’ opposing pitcher throwing at Robinson in his first at-bat, it mostly turns into a heart-warming, heroic and welcoming tale — all within 60 seconds.

We’re pretty sure Robinson’s trip through the minors wasn’t quite so rosy, but history has a tendency to re-written (and re-enacted) to our liking.

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.

Unfortunately, this week’s Heritage Minute couldn’t be provided here for your viewing pleasure, so you’ll have to check it out here.

The time has come.

Since the day I started serving up these weekly Canadian Heritage Minutes I’ve been longing for the start of the NCAA Championship Tournament to unleash what is one of the greatest 60-second segments I’ve seen: Canadian James Naismith’s invention of the game of basketball.

Naismith was born in Ramsay Township, which is now known a Almone, Ontario, and attended McGill University in Montreal before moving to Massachusetts. While working at a YMCA in Springfield (now home of the Basketball Hall of Fame), Naismith invented the game of basketball as a way to keep athletes in shape and active during the northeast’s harsh winter.

Using a pair of peach baskets as the “goals,” Naismith put together his 13 basic rules for the game, and the rest is history.

In the video, Naismith teaches his American students the game and makes a couple of discoveries: 1) A player must be allowed a couple of steps without dribbling, and, 2) they had to put holes in the bottoms of the peach baskets.

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.

Here’s a sweet treat.

As we wait for the NCAA Tournament to begin, bringing with it one of my favorite Heritage Minutes, we’ll take a quick look at a piece of Canada’s history that most of us can agree over a nice weekend breakfast is a pretty good deal: Maple syrup.

This week’s Heritage Minute doesn’t really provide any kind of time element, but shows some indigenous people in Canada tapping a maple tree and making what is believed to be one of the first batches of delicious maple syrup known to man.

In the video, they share their new delicacy with white Canadian settlers, who quickly took up the pasttime and mass produced it, as the woman at the end proudly writes to the King of England some years later that “thanks to the help of our Indian friends, we have produced more than 3,000 pounds of this sweet gift.”

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.

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.