♪ mandolin music I'm a journalist and I am traveling across my home country, Canada.

On this journey, I'll be visiting some amazing signature experiences.

My first stop begins on the west coast of Canada in British Columbia.

♪ I'm here in Nimmo Bay in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest.

This lodge is so remote you can only access it by helicopter or by boat and you really feel like you are immersed in the wilderness.

The Great Bear Rainforest is a magical place famous for its bears and wilderness.

It's part of the largest coastal temperate rainforest on earth.

This forest is so precious, recently parts of its 6.4 million hectares were permanently protected from industrial logging.

Here at Nimmo Bay, visitors like me have the chance to experience nature untouched.

♪ (Helicopter blades whirring) ♪ Nimmo Bay is famous for its helicopter experiences.

The remote lodge acts as a hub almost like a portal to the wilderness.

Guests spend entire days exploring the Great Bear Rainforest.

Accessing locations that would be very difficult to reach without the help of a helicopter.

What do you think of the Great Bear Rainforest, Wayne?

Well I love i.

It keeps me occupied all year round.

It's a great place to work and to be able to appreciate nature for what it is and to be able to work in this all the time is just phenomenal.

The waterfalls, you're gonna find, are everywhere.

♪ Wow, it's beautiful!

How come it's called "Goat Falls," I wonder?

Maybe there's... lots of goats here...?

Yeah, there actually is lots of goats here and sometimes, you know, you see them down here in the trees hanging off the cliff.

(Brandy laughs) And generally speaking, on the top of every waterfall you will find ...a... big... beautiful... lake.

Wow!

It's not just about seeing the landscape - this helicopter is taking us to some of the coolest places to fish and hike.

So we're about, uh, one mile up from the very top end of Seymour Inlet and as you can see, it's a beautiful place for fishing.

We are on an island here with some old growth forest here in the back, which is fantastic grizzly bear habitat.

So since we're gonna do a little bit of fishing, maybe a little fly fishing down here below, we'll just talk a little bit about bear safety.

We're hoping that we have an encounter with a bear but it should be civilized, at a distance and we can all co-exist.

Okay?

If anything goes wrong, I have the shotgun.

We have bear spray.

Otherwise just pay attention to my lead and we'll go from there.

(footsteps) Look at this spot.

This is beautiful!

You can smell the snow.

You know what snow tastes like when you were a kid?

It smells a little bit like that.

That's because the water is coming off of the glacier?

Yeah, right off of the glacier.

The glacier here is about maybe fifteen miles up the valley.

Nice high glacier.

And so the water level is quite high.

You can see that its greenish in colour.

Which its got the glacier silt just starting to come into it.

And it will get milkier and chalkier as we progress into the summer.

I can't wait to get in there.

Let's get in there.

(sloshing soudns) Wow.

Isn't this amazing?

Amazing.

Thank you.

It's beautiful.

Thank you, Wayne.

You see how if I hold the rod up and I go between the kinda, the ten o'clock and the two o'clock position... but holding the tip up.

So ten, two, just going back and forth.

Sort of a very stiff wrist, thumb forward - and then eventually you just want to let it go.

And it just casts out there.

See that?

And the fish are thinking it's a fly?

Yeah, just put this in the water.

Let the current take that downstream a little bit.

And I pull this ten times?

Yes, I want you to pull it off of the reel.

Oh I see, Yeah.

That's one.

Pull it right out, as far as you can.

Three, four.

What I want you to do is pick the rod up.

Throw it back, throw it forward.

Throw it back, throw it forward, keep your thumb on top.

Ten, two, ten, two.

A little more energy.

Ten, two, ten, two.

Oh, oh look it got caught on there.

That's okay.

I'll help you there.

What we'll do is pick it up fairly, Oh there you go.

You're out.

I'm a pro already.

You're gonna be a pro.

This time let it go from here and point the rod straight out.

Close?

Or am I holding it too tight?

Close!

That's okay, now you can point.

See that?

Trigger, and just little strips.

And like you just keep doing this over and over again until you get it right.

Over and over and over and it's about being here and the strategy versus catching.

Think of the line itself when you're accelerating the line back and you stop!

So, here... stop.

You're beautiful at that Wayne!

I think you've done it a few times.

Just a few.

This is a wonderful experience.

Maybe I'm not that good at fishing but it's so nice to be here in the environment and learn and who knows?

One day I might get lucky and catch a fish.

(Wayne) I love the opportunity that heli affords us to arrive here and we're gonna walk down this flood channel here and walk into this island.

And this would be an island between two different channels of a river.

And it's still a pristine old growth forest but also some really good grizzly bear habitat.

First of all, here we've got a day bed and you can see how it's kind of scooped out a little bit.

It looks like an old one.

It hasn't been used this year, but... the shelter that's provided here in the summer time, you know shade, I mean, would be the perfect opportunity for the bears to lie down.

They typically feed late evenings and early mornings so during the heat of the day, like now they would be in here in the shade lying down using these day beds.

We'll see several of these as we go along.

♪ This is a big old cedar tree.

Look how tall it is.

Probably two hundred feet high?

One hundred and seventy-five feet.

You know, there are studies that say that if you hug trees, your cortisol levels will go down.

It's really good for your body.

I'm not joking.

It's very serious.

I know people who've done their master's degree on it, on hugging trees.

People fly all around the world to these old growth forests so that they can get the good vibes from the trees.

Here's another example of a day bed here.

Also not very fresh because of the leaves from the fall, but you can see how they would come in with their paws and they'd just make a little, excavate out a little bit.

Curl up and snooze off for the day.

Absolutely, there's another bed there so that's three now we have come across.

Three, wow, four grizzly day beds.

This is a very popular area.

Maybe they had a sleep-over party?

Well it would be very popular kind of, later in the fall, once the fish start arriving in the rivers.

Take a look at this.

Ooh, somebody's been scratching here, Grizzly bear.

♪ (Gentle, flute music) I'm gonna be the healthiest one here.

It's a tree spa.

(Engine sound) ♪ uptempo Look how close we are!

♪ I call this the Hand of God.

You just landed on the top of a volcano.

Wow.

Amazing.

Welcome to Kingcome Glacier.

Woooow...

This is a- mazing !

I...

I don't think I've seen anything like this in my life.

This is incredible.

♪ (majestic piano) I'm literally hanging out on top of a glacier.

The best part of it for me is the blue, the blue that you see in the crevasses.... just.

You almost want to bite it.

It's wonderful.

Incoming.

♪ Ready.... That's so great.

(helicopter whirring) So far the glaciers have had the biggest effect on me.

Going over top of them and seeing how deep they are and how long they are make you realize how small we are.

At the same time they are receding and a lot of that has to do with climate change and what we are doing to the earth so it's just mind blowing.

We're really affecting the world.

♪ slow, droning They're so cute!

There's some here.

(whispering) Here at Nimmo Bay one of the best ways to see the wildlife in the area, is by boat.

You can explore the Great Bear Rainforest and if you are lucky you can see some black bears like the ones who are right behind me.

(Adrien) So yeah, this time of year these guys are gonna be basically getting the majority of their protein, their calories from the intertidal zone which is essentially, at this low of a tide, is about a fifteen foot gap.

So we are looking at - from the waterline, up into the trees.

They are literally flipping rocks over feeding on crustaceans and so little crab, they'll eat barnacles, little invertebrates, little worms and the idea with that is that they're kind of sustaining themselves until August when the salmon start running and then they will switch, and they'll focus... if they are in the right area, entirely to a salmon-based diet.

These bears here, are they under threat by trophy hunting?

So, black bears specifically are hunted in this area and it's not a lottery system like the grizzly bears.

The black bears - it's just anyone with a resident hunters' number.

And that's pretty normal for mostly British Columbia so the difference between black bears and grizzly bears for hunting,is the access.

Black bears are accessible to most people while grizzly bears are the lottery system for the hunting tags for trophy hunting specifically.

What we've done as an organization is offered a trade-in system, so if you were to get the lottery system of a trophy tag for a grizzly bear you can trade it in for three days at the resort.

And the monetary value is quite substantial for that trade-in and what we basically have done in the past which is, to me absolutely mind-blowing is have people who have been working towards getting a tag to hunt a grizzly for their whole lives, they get one, they're exposed to new information.

They take the chance to open their mind to different thought process.

They trade the tag in and then, instead of shooting this bear on this river system, they will come with myself and actually go to view the bear and interact with it from a distance as a learning process.

So how many bears have you saved?

In this area, we had three last year and hopefully five this year.

So you've saved eight bears since you started and those would be grizzly bears.

Yep.

Wow.

The new British Columbia Government says grizzly bear trophy hunting is no longer allowed in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Hunting bears for meat only will still be allowed in the rest of the Province.

Being here on a boat in the Great Bear Rainforest has been amazing.

I've seen so many animals in just one day and the best part is they are all in their natural environment.

It's just fantastic.

♪ Native flute and drums The next stop on my journey across Canada is in northern Ontario, on Manitoulin Island.

You can get there by ferry in the summer time... (ships' horn) or over their drawbridge all year 'round.

♪ native flute and drums continue ♪ Many times, when people come to Canada they want to have an authentic indigenous experience.

Here on Manitoulin Island in Ontario you have just that with a First Nations guide who will tell you about their life in the past and what it's like today.

♪ drums Alright Brandy, are we ready to start a fire before we kick off our events?

Absolutely.

Alright, so this was very essential to the Three Fires Confederacy of Manitoulin Island which was the Ojibway, Odawa, Potawatomi.

So what we're going to do is, we're going to make a fire and we're using special items such as cattail.

We can get this cattail in the spring time and that's the best time to get it because it's already nice and fluffy on that cattail rod.

So we pull that off of there and what I've done this spring is, I've gathered probably five bags full of this.

And then what I've done here is, I've gone to my cedar tree and lightly rubbed the bark and it creates this beard.

This very soft beard.

And that's very flammable, so we combine that together.

And then what I want to do is show you, if you don't mind touching some of this.

This is birch bark and there is different layers on that birch bark.

This one is a thinner birch than this one.

Yeah, this one is thinner.

It's very fine, right?

So this is the stuff that you would want to use for your flint-striking method.

Why?

Because this would catch a lot easier than that thick stuff.

The thicker birch bark would actually be the ball that goes underneath your cedar twigs, so you'll create this ball... and you'll have your little cedar twigs.

And you'll be placing them on top just like this, (snap) ...like so.

And you see how I created this doorway here?

So once I have my cattail and birch bark going and it's in the flame.

I'll be able to grab two sticks and place that in that doorway.

That's why you always ensure that's there's a doorway there for your flame to enter.

Wow, looks amazing.

Looks a bit tricky.

So we're looking at making a teepee type thing with a doorway, with the cotton tail and the birch underneath right?

And then that will basically be the fuel that will keep the fire going.

Yes, we're going to bring our flint striker as close as possible.

Of course we don't want to have this edge here because we don't want to create a knuckle wound.

We're gonna strike this in there.

Wow.

So can I try?

You can.

I can see that this takes practice.

You're well on your way though, Brandy.

Well, you know I wouldn't want to be starving in the woods trying to figure this out.

It's kind of a joke when we do have this going on.

We make jokes while the people are making it.

"Mom, I'm hungry."

"Auntie, I'm starving."

Oh my goodness.

"I'm so cold."

Yeah!

Look at that!

Oh!

Oh!

Oh!

Is it happening?

It's happening, yes!

Look what you did.

Dinner.

And then we'll place this item into my already made bundle.

So now, once we got our fire going we just continue adding our firewood.

These are very, very fine pieces of cedar.

Cedar is very fast burning.

Very light wood.

So this is why we had cedar to start our fires and then we would move on to our dried-out hardwoods, right?

Like our ash-wood, maybe our birch.

And why are you creating the fire?

Fire has significance to us because it provides light, it provides warmth for our families.

It also was a cooking tool.

But also it was a spiritual doorway for our ancestors.

We were using this to communicate with them.

So often we might put tobacco offerings, which we are going to do to this fire to give thanks for that light, for that warm and that tool that it provides, and that doorway.

This is what we are gonna be using to make our bannock, right, that cooking tool.

We are going to be making our bannock right over this stovetop and maybe some cedar tea or some raspberry meade tea.

♪ drums So we're gonna get your hands dirty and we're going to test your cooking skills and see how your spirit does.

Okay.

We're going to make bannock with four simple ingredients.

We have our flour, this is our bagged flour.

Next we have some Indian magic baking powder.

We've already premeasured for you.

And then we have a little bit of salt, which you are going to measure that out yourself.

Then of course, our key ingredient is water.

So have-at-her Brandy, I want to see what you can do.

I'm scared.

(laughs) Okay, so first you want me to put the baking soda in?

Yeah.

All the baking soda in there... Baking powder , Baking powder , Baking powder , we're making bread.

(laughing) Okay.

That was roughly about a tablespoon that you just dumped in there.

So we are going to get a nice, airy bread.

That's what helps make it airy, right?

I'll take that bowl from you.

Next ingredient, we're going to take a dime size in our spoon, so take that out, yeah, that's perfect.

Like that?

That'll be good.

Slowly sift it in and you're going to mix everything.

With my hands?

Yeah, well, with your spoon, you're going to join everything with your spoon.

Once we add the water, and this is when you are going to actually get your hands in there and start sifting everything around.

You can also use your spoon.

It depends on how messy you want to get.

Okay.

What we are going to do next is add water.

Okay, and just...

Slowly pour that in, about a quarter of a cup at a time.

I'll let you know when to stop.

Alright, we'll sift that around with your spoon.

Yeah, get right in there, like mix that up.

Get right in there, get vigorous!

So what I have is two cast-iron pans already warming up... By gosh, that looks pretty good Brandy.

And who taught you how to make this?

My grandma showed me how to make this when I was a child.

I like watching her make her bread.

She would make it with blueberries, we'd put raspberries in it.

Sometimes she would infuse maple syrup into the water so that was a natural sugar that was going into your bread.

So we would get this nice sweet-tasting bread, right?

So that's good enough right there, we don't want to move it around too much.

What we are going to do is, we are going to walk over to our fire.

Our cast iron pans are very hot.

Safety always counts.

I'm just blowing a little bit of debris from the fire.

A little bit of ash, a little bit of ash doesn't hurt anybody but it's always nice to have a clean pan to drop your bread into.

Do it with the spoon?

Yeah, so what you're going to do is just kinda dump it in there like this.

I'll give you a hand...

Dump it, dump it... Yep, that's good.

Keep going keep going.

That's good.

Make sure you get all that in there.

Drop that in there.

So this, this is a modern way of doing this bannock.

Of course we didn't have our cast iron pans back in the day.

What you are going to do is walk it into our fire.

Perfect and drop it right in this spot here where that flame is.

'Kay?

Now you are going to take the other pan and you're gonna use that as a lid.

You don't have to line up your handle.

Put the handle off to the side a little bit.

That way it will enclose that, eh?

We are creating an oven effect between these two pans, right?

So now if you will grab that pot off of there.

We're going to move that to the side and we're gonna walk back to our table because we have cedar leaves waiting for us.

This is what we are going to use to make our tea.

So of course cedar, or in our language, we learned that it was "Giizhik" right?

We use this in our spiritual purification smudging ceremony.

This sits in that western doorway and it has that medicinal property, that spiritual property.

It also has an edible property and that is what we are gonna use it for.

So now we are going to take that to our pot.

You are going to take your glove, take the lid off, it's hot.

We're going to drop those leaves in there.

Just like this?

Yep.

That's hot.

Just drop them in?

Yep.

♪ flute and drum Take a smell.

It smells amazing.

It has a very beautiful smell to it.

We were using this to help alleviate any sinus congestion.

Also the vapors, we would drape some leather or some fur around us and we would take in that steam, right?

Help alleviate that congestion.

Let's see how this turned out.

That is a nice golden colour.

See the steam coming off it?

It looks like we have some nice, airy bread going on there.

We've got that nice syrupy jam on there.

Oh, Brandy!

Is it good?

Oh Brandy, this is better than my bread.

No, you're lying.

I think you are going to have to come and work for us here at Great Spirit Circle Trail.

What do you think?

It's amazing, but you know what?

The jam is amazing, too.

♪ flute and drums Closed Captioning Presto!Digital Colourgrade