Settling the Canadian West

The National Film Board of Canada has just launched an extraordinary website with hundreds of clips from 90 years of film-making in Canada. So far I’m not finding anything specifically Hebridean, but here’s a full-length dramatisation of the settling of the prairies, featuring a family from Montreal that takes a new farm in Saskatchewan in 1907 and encounters (every last one of) the misfortunes that no doubt hit Hebridean settlers there as well. Spot the dodgy Scottish accent, and one real one.

Dir. Don Haldane, 1962, 69min

For something lighter and even farther off-topic, try the classic animated shorts, Log Driver’s Waltz (1979) and The Cat Came Back (1988) .  And lots of other good stuff.