h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The second one starts on the French River in Ontario (I've spent childhood summers on that river)


Don't worry, I'm sure he's going to do fine with getting to everywhere.

He did a funny series not long ago with this rather nervous academic British chappy who was an 'expert' in all kinds of theoretical abstract academic knowledge to do with 'wild foods' of Britain.

My god that man was hard work round the camp fire...and nervous as hell of actually trying the stuff to eat. I don't know how Ray kept his patience...he basically had to nursemaid him the whole time.

I only have hazy memories of that, and it was quite amusing...but I hope that guy won't feature in any future series.

Less than ten minutes away from being finished the whole series.



It definitely is worth watching and yes, he certainly is rightly respectful. And beautifully filmed.


Two things I would have liked to see:

concerning the fur trade a bit about the York boat would have been interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_boat

and

I would have loved to see him working on the construction of a Metis Red River Cart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_cart


Both technologies were vital to the fur trade and trade in general in the West.

But, very, very well done.

I'm *so* glad you enjoyed it. Bring on 8th Fire.

Another touching thing about him I discovered...apparently about 5 years ago his wife died of breast cancer. He said he always thinks of her when he's in the wild places.

8th Fire is very, very different.

Mears very sensitively looks back at the First Nations contributions in the past and very much concentrates on bushcraft, which is completely understandable: that's his specialty.

8th Fire is about now and the future -- past is discussed at length because it has created the current situation. But the real message of 8th Fire is "let's talk and fix things together, for the benefit of us all". It's a call to reconciliation, and the voice is the proud and gentle voice of elder brothers and sisters, not the plea of a downtrodden and broken people.

Mears learned bushcraft from the people. In 8th Fire, the people are offering to teach societycraft.

Yes i had certainly expected it to be entirely different..I'm not *dim*.

But hey thanks for explaining in what way it is different. Mears is still of the white man explorer tradition and he is still the focus.

That's why I am excited to move onto 8th Fire

I hope that 'dim' comment didn't sound too rude? Maybe it's my new New York brashness?

No really the concept is what I was so keen to learn about in Australia. But the Aboriginal culture there is very secretive about giving away too much to the white people..understandably so...and it was always I think a very very gentle culture, incredibly vulnerable...and more utterly devastated...and white Australia can be very very aggresive place in the outback..

We have so much to learn about social things from these peoples.

This is a bit funny. One night our group went for a meal in Alice Springs. All the restaurants are full of tourists every night. Across from the main street is a park. Every night that is full of hundreds of aboriginals who gather to drink. It is a weird uncomfortable feeling.

I finished my meal..and suddenly stood up and told our group I was going out to talk to the Aboriginals..I said I hated the apartheid of the situation. They all all thought I was utterly mad and urged against it. But I went out to the park..Of course it was all a bit futile...they were very drunk and clearly thought I was the maddest white person they'd ever met. They would only speak native languages.

But deep down I think it was a good thing I did. I feel proud of myself to this day...and never felt in the slightest danger.

However the rest of my group come to increasingly view me as something a bit dangerous and not quite one of them

I should probably mention that when we went on that trip through BC last summer, part of it was through the same area David Thompson trekked, as described in episode three.

In the '70s the Alberta Government built a great huge damn on the North Saskatchewan up there and flooded a huge area of land which was the subject of a land claims dispute with the Stoney Nation. The pleas of the Stoney, including begging that the old cabin of a renowned elder not be destroyed, fell on deaf ears.

After the flooding, a competition was held among Alberta school children to name the new lake behind the dam. The winning suggestion, the bitter irony lost on the Government, was "Abraham Lake" in memory of the Stoney Elder whose cabin had been destroyed.


The highway that runs from Rocky Mountain House (where Mears learned about flintlocks) to Saskatchewan Crossing (where the Howse and Mistaya Rivers meet the North Saskatchewan) below Howse Pass (which Thompson "discovered" and mapped) is called the David Thompson Highway. It's a startlingly beautiful drive in the autumn.


Howse Pass is a National Historic Site: http://www.pc.gc.ca/docs/v-g/pm-mp/lhn-nhs/howse_e.asp

To think we came so close to emigrating to Canada when I was 6....(oh what might have been of my life if my dad hadn't got promotion). Instead we moved to an ugly faux Victorian house on a busy main road in a no-mans land...

Have you seen Billy Connolly's "Journey to the Edge of the World"? I've just started watching it this morning.


http://ww3.tvo.org/video/165523/billy-connolly-journey-edge-world-episode-1

It won't play here.

I was worried about that.


Connolly is just having a blast with the people and the landscape, doing Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Baffin Island in the first two episodes. He's just laughing with pure joy through the whole journey. Not a whole lot of depth, just joyful appreciation. He nearly peed his pants at the throat singing.

There seem to be only bits and pieces of it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=billy+connolly+voyage+to+the+edge+of+the+world&oq=billy+connolly+voyage+to+the+edge+of+the+world&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=513l3807l0l5639l28l20l0l17l0l2l1153l1749l0.1.4-1.7-1l3l0


I really dispise this international blocking.


In the last two episodes (which I've not watched yet) he sails through the Northwest Passage and then goes overland through the Yukon and British Columbia, finishing on Vancouver Island.

And they are obviously very good at it. I just did a 'free trial' of ahem unblocking thing. Still no dice.

Hopefully they'll show the Billy Connelly thing here at some point. I've seen his Oz and NZ ones in the past. The Beeb will probably buy it.

I believe it's available on DVD somewhere.

I can't get over how exuberant Billy is about everything he sees and everyone he meets. He comes across as overwhelmingly filled with gratitude for every moment of his visit. It's all totally anecdotal, like he's just jumping out to throw himself into whatever strikes his fancy, whether it's helping to haul in fish with the locals, riding with a trucker down the Dempster Highway, or paying his respects at the graves of ordinary seamen on the Franklin Expedition. He comes across as extraordinarily sensitive, never more so than when he takes part in an Inuit family's seal hunt and suddenly realizes things about himself and shares those realizations with the audience.

I've never really paid much attention to the man before, but from this journey I'd love to invite him over for a nice long visit.

Oy!


It's an ITV production from 2008: http://www.itv.com/Lifestyle/BillyConnolly/default.html

Hey

Shall have a browse later.

That link doesn't seem to include his visit to Vancouver Island.

Just as well, we don't want word to get out about its total awesomeness. (Dude!)

He gets to Vancouver Island in the last few minutes of episode four. I think they found themselves with too much good footage from the rest of the trip: Vancouver Island is represented by Billy standing on the beach gazing into the distance for about thirty seconds.

Just watched the final part of the Billy Connelly programmes about his trip across Canada.

Excellent...and he makes a point at the end of saying how lovely the people are..

When you linked me to that earlier...I must have missed where it said the programmes were actually showing again. But by pure chance I stumbled on the last one today...and it only had 2 days left. But that did for me really...and it was nice he was coming south from the very cold awsome north.

I'm a bit funny about too much of raw landscapes at present...especially cold ones...but it was amazing the colours of the trees as he was biking through Yukon into BC in the autumn.

I'm very pleased I caught it...and it's nice how women feature regularly..men also, who are earthy and warm..living and working in such wild places.