♪ bouncy mandolin ♪ add bass I'm a journalist and I am traveling across my home country Canada.

On this journey I'll be visiting some iconic Canadian experiences.

My journey begins in the westernmost province of Canada, British Columbia.

♪ ♪ smooth jazz guitar I've come to the city of Kelowna, which is in the Okanagan.

This place is famous for its beautiful wine region, its mild climate and the Okanagan Lake.

And I've come here to explore the Indigenous culture you can experience here and agri-tourism.

♪ When people come to Kelowna, they want to try wine because this is a region which is really well known for its vineyards.

And I'm with Anne Sperling, she has been making wine for thirty-five years.

Anne, tell me a little bit about how you got into this?

Well, I grew up with it.

It's, my family's been here since the 1880's and we've been kind of through the whole history and evolution of the wine industry in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia.

And so I really, you know just spent my whole life doing this.

So literally wine is running in your veins, right?

You could say that.

It's a genetic quality, right?

So tell me a little bit about how the region here makes for a good wine-growing place?

Well the Okanagan Valley is a very varied climate but it's dry here so it makes it easy to, to farm a range of grape varieties.

Here in the Kelowna area where it's a bit cooler we work with varieties like Riesling, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

[Brandy] Wonderful.

Let's try these wines!

I can't wait.

All right.

So let's start with some bubbles.

So... Is this your favorite?

Oh, I totally love this wine.

This, we made this wine in 2011 so it's had some time to age 'in bottle'.

And really show the fineness that it's developed.

And of course sparkling, you know, just the pop of the cork gives you that feeling of festivity and that... (loud pop) (laughing) That's wild!

...that something good is going to happen!

Well, I'm feeling very lucky now.

That's shocked me but I'm ready to party!

Here's a...

So fun... And there's one for me to try as well.

Perfect.

So, there we go.

Wow.

Cheers.

Cheers!

Ooooh...

I like it.

Yeah those bubbles are great.

They are, it's very... light.

It feels very light.

It's not too sweet, either.

No, this is a dry wine.

And the thing about Pinot Noir is that it has a lovely persistence on the palate.

So that means that you can kind of put it with a wide range of foods and and it really works just to harmonize and bring the food and wine together.

So now we have red wine.

This is a lot quieter to open.

Yeah!

I'm sort of disappointed actually.

But this is a more of a classic style Pinot Noir.

It's not heavy.

It's got that lightness but it's also persistent.

It's beautiful.

MM, hmmm!

Well Anne, I'd love to learn more about what you do behind the scenes.

Oh I'm so excited because today is the day that we're pressing off the Pinot Noir.

What that means is that the skins and seeds and juice have all been fermenting together for a few weeks and now they're - it's dry and it's ready to be pressed off.

Wonderful.

All right!

There we go.

All right!

Whoa.

Look at that!

Look at that... Look at all of those fermented grapes.

Yeah.

This is a day's harvest.

And it's about a third of the Pinot Noir that we make.

Look at that.

I can just pull it from the stems.

Yup.

Wow... Anne, thank you so much for showing me behind the scenes and what it's like to be a winemaker.

Cheers!

Cheers!

♪ Here in Kelowna I've come to the Sncewips Heritage Museum and I'm with Jordan and Crystal I want to learn about the West Bank First Nation.

Tell me about your community.

Our community is a very vibrant, very beautiful community.

It's a very small community and compared to the rest of our, our neighboring First Nation communities along the Okanagan Lake and in the Okanagan region.

Our community consists of about 850 Westbank First Nation members.

But in the grand scheme we're all part of one Syilx nation, one united nation that goes down south to Wilbur, Washington, up north to Mica Creek across the Kootenay Lakes to the east and into the Nicola Valley to the west.

Tell me what the museum is all about.

The museum is here to make sure that West Bank First Nation, the Okanagan people and Syilx nation's perspective of history is represented in authentic manner with honesty, with truth but also with a lot of compassion and humor.

So a part of what I do here at Sncewips is I am the curatorial and heritage researcher and what I do here is I help build connections between the land and relationships with people.

What I've been able to provide is experiences.

So this is what I harvested with a colleague of mine in the springtime.

So this species is “Qual Qual Ma Neeth ”.

One more time?

(Speaking Okanagan) “Qual Qual Ma Neeth ” “Qual Qual Ma Neeth ” Yup!

“Qual Qual Ma Neeth ”.

This is a species of Sage.

[Brandy] And it all came from the Okanagan area?

[Crystal] Yep, this is what I turn into Sage bundles.

[Brandy] And what is a sage bundle?

So a sage bundle is for gift-giving a lot of times.

Now gift-giving is a very important part of our culture.

We have values based on what you give out is what you get back.

And a lot of times what we get back is stuff that we want for our families.

So even though we are gift-giving and working very hard to collect these items into and to harvest essentially it's intended to give away so that what we get in return is really, we're taking care of as well.

Wow.

And what do people do with these sage bundles?

They'll open them and they can either make tea or they can smudge with it.

[Brandy] And when you say smudging, what do you mean?

So this will actually... this can be burnt and then the smoke can be used to, to clean you off.

So this is another style that's typically what'll happen with these ones is they're burnt.

So they'll be burnt at celebration for a variety of reasons like good and grieving.

Beautiful.

I'll give that back to you here.

Well I'm really looking forward to learning how to make a bundle.

OK so this here...

Yes.

We like to use cloth.

OK.

So what you want to do is take your sage.

OK.

So you take a bundle like this.

Am I doing this right?

Yes.

You just crunch it down a little bit.

I don't want to wreck your sage.

It's a strong medicine.

You're not going to wreck it.

Okay, okay, good.

So you put it on the end like this.

Fill it right up and then take this over top.

Like all the way?

All the way.

Yes, over top like that.

Once you go over maybe you know you can go over twice.

OK. You take one side, fold it in.

OK you take the other side and fold that in as well.

Nice and... ...tight?

Yup!...

and then just keep rolling it.

Wonderful.

So then what I do is I take my string, and I start from one side and make it all nice and even and twist it.

And for me I'm, I'm big on presentation.

I like it to look really good.

Is that okay?

Let's see.

That's beautiful!

Yeah?

It's my first.

Your very first one so you can keep that one.

Because it's your first one you've gotta give it away.

I have to give it away?

Yes.

Thank you.

I'll give it to someone special as a gift.

Thank you for teaching me about this.

♪ Next I traveled around thirty miles north in the Okanagan region of the Southern Interior of British Columbia to the city of Vernon.

♪ The Okanagan is well-known for its farm-to-table food and I'm with Chef Kelly Lacroix.

She's a local bistro owner here and she's going to teach me how to make the famous charcuterie board that so many people want when they have a party or they just wanna, you know have a nice bottle of wine with their hubby or wife.

So teach me how to do this.

I'd love to know where you got all these ingredients from?

So I shop at local farmer's markets and because we live in the beautiful British Columbia that it is so easy to get beautiful meats and cheeses because there's so many people producing them locally it's pretty fortunate where we live.

So I always start off with my cheeses.

I think it's... you wouldn't want to go put a whole bunch of cheddars on the same board or a whole bunch of Havarti so I like to have a bunch of selections so I have a couple of different things with us today.

We have a couple of different Jack cheeses.

I got a horseradish spicy Jack and then a Mediterranean Jack, you really taste the olives and stuff in this one and then we got a couple of different Havartis.

We got an Amber Ale Havarti which is really nice.

And then we got the Gew ürztraminer Havarti as well which is really nice.

And then for cheddars today what did we bring?

We brought some beautiful Canadian maple cheddar and then we have some blueberry cheddar, too.

The blueberries in there just pop in your mouth when you eat them.

So do you wanna do a board?

I do, I do.

So you take a board.

I'll slide this out of the way for a second.

Do you want to do the board up closer there?

I'd like to do it right here.

There we go.

So since you're new to this you pick the colors that you think is pretty so which...?

You pick a cheddar there.

I want the one that sounds like there was wine in it.

Yes.

So that is the Gew ürztraminer.

That's always where my mind is at... (chuckles) So I like to pick prettier ones too, right?

If you put a bunch of white - white on the board, it's kind of boring, right?

(Brandy) OK. (Kelly) So, I'm going to put this one right there and you want some depth to your board, too so you can get some spots higher than you can and build them up and around it's kind of really fun, too.

So just dump it?

Yeah.

And you kind of like build it like little marbles so you can get it up nice and tall.

Because my little bistro just happens to make a couple of really nice dips, they go really well on the charcuterie boards so we have a roasted beet hummus and a spinach dip today.

So go ahead.

Which one you like?

We put a little goat cheese on the roasted beef.

I would like to eat this one... Yeah.

I put that on the board.

That way there's a little something to go with their breads too.

Every good charcuterie board needs some beautiful olives.

And what kind of olives are we talking about?

So, I always go to the local deli and just get a mixture of olives.

So there's some garlic stuffed olives the little Sicilian shriveled olives in there.

So I'm gonna put my olives on the plate.

Now we go to our meat.

It's missing our meat.

So.

I like to have some flat meats.

So I like to roll it because I find it takes up some nice space there.

So you know... Just roll it like that?

Yeah.

And sometimes you can roll it and spread it in a way that takes up less room too, right?

So you get three meats, three cheeses, enough that everybody kind of gets to have a bite of everything.

So you kind of want a lamb, some ham.

You don't want to go put just all pig on your board.

That would be a little bit.

And what is this?

This is called Schinkenspeck.

I don't know if I say it right - it's a German name but I just say it with pure confidence and then I feel like I'm saying it right.

And what is it?

It's a ham?

It's a ham.

Yum, yum, yum.

What else we got?

(Kelly) You have some blackened farmer sausage that's always really pretty on the board because the black wrapper on it.

Blackened farmer's sausage, beautiful.

One two three four five pieces... just put that there?

You betcha.

However you want.

I also got...

This is a Ukrainian farmer sausage.

Now we're talkin', right?

Right into my ancestry here.

I just do bread in a toaster.

We don't have access to a plugin out here so I pre-did it.

I do the pumpernickel rye sliced and white in the toaster and then I put one white, one pumpernickel so when I slice it, it's kind of already like that and then it's just a matter of finding some room on your board.

Now you can just put in some pretty fruits and vegetables on it and you can do whatever you like.

But there's no room!

So I like to tuck it in like that.

Tuck it in, tuck it in.

There you go, so whenever I find a nice spot I'm like... hmmm look at those dragon fruits are looking really pretty there.

Where do you get dragon fruits?

You can buy them at any grocery store most of the time.

So grapes are a good one, too.

Like if you have a really big board, look how much room that would take up on a board.

A lot.

So you know it depends how many people you're feeding and how much if you have a big board but not a lot of meat and cheese, grapes will really save your life there.

Let's look at the... You've been hunting that dragon fruit this whole time so you go ahead and use that.

(Brandy) Well, I like the dragon fruit!

It's so original.

And I really like these little green things here.

I love the micro greens.

So then I just finish off with a couple a little, I stick in a few little more pretties just to get it right.

And that's how I would send out a board at the bistro.

Wonderful.

Well thank you so much for sharing this with me.

You're welcome!

Thanks for coming to the Okanagan where I can... "wow ya!"

Amazing.

♪ My next experience in Vernon is a little hairy.

I traveled to the historic O'Keefe Ranch to do some outdoor exercise.

Alright, look at this!

It's time for some goat yoga...!!!!

Woo hoo, I can't wait.

Goat yoga has become very popular and I can see why.

♪ And lengthen the leg as you lift the toes and bow to the limb.

(Brandy) I can feel your breath in my ear.

Just round the corners of your mouth and bring a big beautiful smile on that face.

And wrap your fingers around.

It's hard to do this when somebody's chewing on your leg!

For three, two, one.

Foot lifts into the sky.

Now in your own way, you can come back down to the earth.

We'll bring the soles of the feet together, lengthen the body forward and look towards the earth.

(guffaws, laughter) These goats are so inquisitive and the yoga makes you feel so good.

Just relax with your goat.

(laughing) Does it get any better?

I love the feeling of the tickling and now the hooves on my back.

(laughing) This is the best way to exercise!

I don't understand why you'd ever want to sweat or stretch, without a goat!

Thanks, guys!

My next adventure takes me east across Canada over 1,300 miles to the northern Ontario city of Thunder Bay.

♪ I'm in Thunder Bay and this place is on Lake Superior and is surrounded by nature.

It has been revitalized from an industrialized centre to one that is buzzing with tourism and lots of outdoor activities.

♪ I've never gone sailing before and I'm on Lake Superior with Greg Heroux and he's going to teach my friend Stephanie and I how to do this.

Why is Lake Superior a good place to learn?

Lake Superior is a great place to learn to sail because it has such a combination of different experiences at the same time, calm fresh waters, the lake is so big it's called the Inland Sea so at some points you get bigger waves more of a challenge so you can really grow from just getting on a boat not knowing anything about sailing to knowing enough to cross an ocean and you do that all by learning here on Lake Superior.

Wonderful.

Okay.

I can't wait.

Let's go and do it!

So our sail is what propels us when we're in the water and when the wind is coming.

So we need to get the sail up the mast.

And for that we have halyards.

So they're turned around the top of the mast.

And when you pull them it brings the sail up.

Wow.

OK?

So that's what we're doing, now when we bring the sail up we're going to be out on the water and not on the dock.

But what we need to do now is just walk around the boat and get familiar with all the lines, how they work and how we're gonna use it.

Because the boat is forty feet and the pressure and the strength needed to do all this maneuvers is too much for just physical strength, we have devices called winches which assist us in pulling them around.

And as you turn this winch you get a lot of mechanical advantage and allows you to pull heavy, heavy loads with just the use of that.

Can I do it?

Yeah, please.

Go this way?

If you go that way, try going the other way.

Okay.

See how one way is really fast and easy... Oh ya.

... And the other way is slow.

Go the other way now.

Now I control whether you do anything or not... if I don't have any tension, you're just spinning in circles.

Yep.

If I pull, then the line comes with me.

Cool.

All right.

So that's the first lesson - how to use the winch.

So one thing about safety on a sailboat like this is - that you never face that way.

You always faced inwards like this so you're always here like that and you're gonna be in and crouch down because if you're feeling like this and the boat goes...

Yes.

That's a place for bad balance.

This is a lot to think about.

It is a lot to think about1 We don't teach sailing in an hour we teach it in years.

Yeah, I guess so!

To be a really good sailor, we can have you out on the water in about ten hours.

You know, really enjoying yourself and being comfortable but always working to help somebody else who's already had some experience.

And my guess is that if you spent a summer like if you spent twenty hours on this course, twenty hours on the second level course, twenty hours on the third level course for the time you finish that sixty hours over about a week or two weeks, you'd be comfortable taking some of these sailboats and going out on a nice day.

Not a rough day, but a nice day.

And then you go up there and you say OK I've done five nice days - let me take a half-rough day and then you start learning by challenging yourself.

And how long have you been doing it, Greg?

My dad bought my boat when I was ten years old.

Okay.

So that's a lotta years.

A lot of years and you've gone to some really far places?

From here, I've sailed right across Lake Superior and out, down to the east coast of Canada and out across the Atlantic Ocean into the Mediterranean.

Mediterranean, back to the, you know the Caribbean and back home.

So I lived on this vessel for eight months as I crossed.

Wow... Yeah.

It was fun.

Okay, we are in good hands, Stephanie.

Thank you.

(laughs) So this is my throttle.

In this position here it's in neutral, it's not driving the boat, soon as I push it down, you hear it engage the propeller.

And now we're leaving the dock.

Woo Hoo!

Here we go!

So drive it like a car.

This is the center and the top.

You move to the left, it's going to go there.

We want you to just drive straight out that opening up there.

I'm going to go and tie up these safety lines, OK?

So there you are.

You've already got command of the vessel.

This is scary... (laughs) How'm I doing?

(Greg) You're doing well.

We're going to hoist the main sail.

OK?

OK.

So we just need to come forward here, untie and I'm gonna give you, put you in the center cockpit area.

[Greg] There you go!

Ok I'm gonna pull... pull!

This is the most rewarding portion of the sail is when that engine goes off and you just hear... OK. Now listen to this.

OK. Engine off...

Isn't that beautiful?

And that's why we sail.

OK. You imagine we're going nicely with this one, but if we put a second sail up we're gonna even grab a little bit more speed.

(winch grinding) Well done, so now we're sailing with two sails essentially today we have got flat water and a little bit of a breeze.

Really, really great for starting to get an understanding of how the boat moves because we're turning which way to get to the tower?

We're going to go port side.

Good.

Ready?

Yeah.

And just that's enough.

OK. ♪ So then at the end of the day and all the lessons are done and I'm confident my crew has learned well I get to relax and put the command back at the helm and sit and enjoy... sailing... ♪ One of the most amazing things about Thunder Bay is that they find these beautiful purple gemstones right here in the ground.

And Tim Lukinuk owns the amethyst mine Panorama.

Tell me what you found in the quarry here?

Hey, we find amethyst, Ontario's mineral emblem and it's a beautiful purple-colored stone.

It forms right here in Northwestern Ontario.

Our family's been mining at this location for thirty-eight years now.

The amethyst itself is about a billion years old.

There was a big fault came an earthquake that open the earth up here.

There was warm minerals that came in later and then they started to crystallize and grow and they formed these six-sided little crystals.

Did you know each one of these has six sides?

No, I didn't, but I also didn't know how heavy it was.

So I'm gonna let you hold it.

So who is interested in amethyst?

Oh, everyone's interested in amethyst.

It's a real beautiful stone.

You can come here to the mine and dig your own just for garden stones or pieces to put on your deck or just little things for the kids to have.

And then our family also takes these and makes things; so we make jewelry, clocks...

Some people also use big pieces like this to make fireplaces or gardens, garden walls, things like that.

Beautiful.

Well I'd love to see more inside the quarry.

Do you mind taking me around?

Sure.

We can go for a walk.

Thank you.

Wow!

Well, let's even stop right here, if you want.

This is amazing!

I can't believe how big this is.

Yep it's all over the place.

Look at this piece here, right here.

That is gorgeous, look at that.

These amazing, amazing gems.

Watch your step but this is one of these large vugs, we call it spelled V-U-G. That's where the amethyst grows.

This is an oversized one.

Often they're packed full of heavy thick mud.

You can see the mud but these crystals were growing in here at one time.

Here's a great big one.

You know it's never been... Never seen the light of day in like one billion years.

And we're seeing it right now, Tim.

Yep, for the first time.

Amazing.

Great big crystals, you can count them again.

The sides - one side, two, three, four, five, six.

This one's got one point and a kind of a second one is growing, but great big amazing ones.

And look at this, there's even a flower growing.

Hey, there's life!

This place is full of treasures.

Well, all this amethyst is one billion years old so it's way before, you know there was life on Earth there's no dinosaur bones or anything like that in here.

It's really quite old but it's really quite a miracle that we had all this amethyst here for the taking.

We hope to be here for many years more.

We are mining slowly and carefully.

Amethyst is a non-renewable resource we're trying to make sure that we've got this for years and years everything this purple has a purpose.

This, this is out in the, the digging area.

This is where our guests come.

This is what most people want to do, come out here and dig their own amethyst.

We have a little bit of a water hose here, again that helps us clean off the stone.

But as you can see there's amethyst all over the place.

Wonderful.

We add material on a regular basis plus there's material been dumped out here for... probably for twenty years, it's four or five acres... lots and lots of amethyst.

And do people come here looking for gemstones that might have healing properties?

Yep, some do - especially the wands lately, they've been.

If you get some pieces that are quite long that really come almost complete crystals, they have healing properties.

People will spend quite a bit of time trying to find those.

Neat.

Other people are looking for bigger stones for gardens or their back deck, things like that.

I just found an incredible piece.

And of course you never know what you're going to find.

Wow, that is wonderful.

It's white and then purple.

Yeah.

Hold on to that one.

Wow.

Well listen, thank you so much, Tim for sharing this with me.

I think it's a great experience.

It's so much fun.

What a cool family business.

It is.

Thank you.

Thanks for visiting us.

♪ ♪