♪ jaunty mandolin and hand clapping Brandy: I'm a journalist and I'm traveling across my home country, Canada.

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

My next stop lies in the center of Canada -- in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

♪ music up ♪ repeating guitar scale I'm here in Winnipeg, Manitoba at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

I've come here to learn more about what human rights means and why fighting for them is so important.

Well, here we are in the Israel Asper Tower of Hope.

At night, it glows like a beacon.

For everyone to come, and it's also like the icy tower that sits atop the mountain that houses all stories of human rights.

Brandy Yanchyk: Th Canadian Museum for Human Rights is unique because it's the world's only museum that explores human rights as a concept.

It opened its doors in 2014.

(Fitzhenry) Most museums are based around a collection of objects.

We're based around an idea.

And so what we do is tell stories from all kinds of angles and aspects to illuminate that idea which is human rights.

The first line of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights appears very large in two locations in the museum.

Human rights are different for different people but at their fundamental level it's about people having dignity and respect.

And so we we go from there and we explore, you know, what actually are human rights?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights grew out of the devastation after the Second World War.

But really it's only in the last few decades that people have started calling it human rights and thinking about it in a particular way.

Brandy: Ali Saeed is one of the people whose stories are told in the museum.

He was a refugee and now lives in Winnipeg.

Ali was a victim of the Red Terror in Ethiopia when Marxist military rulers tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands in the late 1970s.

My story is the story of the Red Terror.

The Red Terror is similar to the Holocaust.

The military dictators killed more than 350,000 people.

Brandy: Ali was a prisoner in Ethiopia for five years because of his work in basic human rights.

Ali: Two months before they took me away they took my brother.

My brother was tortured more than me.

I found out later he... and forty-one others were rounded up and shot in the head.

Then after five years of physical and mental torture I was released.

Brandy: Today, Ali visits the Canadian Museum for Human Rights regularly.

So potentially you could know some of these people?

Oh yeah, I know them.

Even my brother is here.

My own brother is here.

Wow.

Yeah, so that's why sometimes when I come to this museum it's just like visiting them.

This is what happened to me and to others.

And I feel that here in the museum this is the free-est place in the whole world.

So you can learn about holocaust.

Here in the museum, you can learn about Darfur; what happened.

Here in the museum you could learn about Ethiopia, about Red Terror.

Here in the museum you can learn about the stories of indigenous people.

And here in the museum you can learn about human being.

Brandy: Mary Courchene's story is also shared in the museum.

She is an Indian Residential School survivor who now lives in Winnipeg.

(Marty) It wasn't that I was so much physically abused or even sexually abused as others had experienced.

It was the loss of familial upbringing.

As we were growing up that was taken away from us.

Our childhood was taken away.

And those are the type of little desks.

See the desks?

That was the type of desks that we had.

I didn't see my mama... for a whole year.

(Fitzhenry) Mary Courchene is a resilient survivor of the Indian residential school system in Canada where children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to church and state-run schools.

Right from the 1830s up until 1996, the intention of Indian residential school was to literally "take the Indian out of the child."

Mary: I was stripped of my identity, I was stripped of my language and I was stripped of my culture, systematically.

So... you tell me if that's cultural genocide?

Yes.

It is.

Do you think today with the museum and the display that people are learning about it more?

They are talking about it more?

Yes they are talking about more.

And they're learning about it.

So we have a long road ahead of us.

To, you know, not just talk about it but to do something about it.

Residential School should have never happened.

And we are, today we are fighting, that, that cause.

The stories of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights have really taught me about the power and resilience of the human spirit and how important education is so that these tragedies never happen again.

My travels to Winnipeg have also given me the chance to examine another aspect of its history.

The Manitoba legislature and its Hermetic Code.

♪ percussive rhythm "The Hermetic Code" is the title of my book on this secret symbolism in the Manitoba legislative building revolving around four sacred principles.

Numbers, geometry, astrology and alchemy which are the template for decyphering the language of this exquisite building.

Brandy: After years of study, Frank Albo came up with the conclusion that this building is a modern reconstruction of King Solomon's Temple.

And that it contains th secret traditions of Freemasonry which are all hidden in plain view.

Albo: I wasn't expecting that I'd become the world expert of the Manitoba legislative building but I noticed something on the roof of the building that caused me to park my car and ask the most powerful question you could ask of any mystery which was simply, "Why?"

and the why that compelled me was - Why are there two Sphinxes on the roof of the Manitoba legislative building?

What you'll see here is an inscription, which you cannot see from the ground and is only visible from the roof.

It's not found in Montreal, it's not found in Chicago nor New York, but here in Manitoba.

Now what's very peculiar is that this inscription is legible... if you know how to read the language of the ancient Egyptians.

Now what is written in this hieroglyphic relief is: “To the firm and everlasting manifestation of Sun-God Ray (or Ra), the good God who gives life.” So hidden on the roof of this building in a place that nobody could see, in gramatically accurate hieroglyphics, is an invocation to the Sun God, to give life to something in this building.

The architect of the Manitoba legislative building believed that this building would, in the course of time, make people more intelligent, better balanced and altogether more civilized.

And the reason he believed this was because he placed within the fabric of this building, clues and puzzles that he was hoping to enchant the public to try to figure out.

We're going to peer up and look at the strange effigy on the dome of the building which is colloquially called the Golden Boy, who you will come to appreciate is really the Greek god Hermes.

OK. Hermes is the messenger of the gods.

He is the person that you probably know as the FTD florist logo.

Okay, you know the comic book figure "Flash."

All of these figures are derived from this messenger who was meant to represent Winnipeg - because Winnipeg was supposed to be the messenger capital of North America.

The railway lines of Winnipeg and in the exchange you see these wonderful buildings, It's all a signal of Winnipeg as the keystone province of distribution of the grain.

I spent four graduate degrees and ten years trying to get into the mind of a dead British genius named Frank Worthington Simon, the architect of this building.

What you're going to understand and appreciate is that this building is a temple.

So what evidence do we have for this?

Now it turns out that there was a convention to temple architecture and temples were "tripartite" which is a fancy word for three divisions of increased order of holiness.

You'd have a holy room, a more holy room and then an even more holier room.

High five to you, yes.

How we know about this is that surrounding this room are various apatrophate devices, figures that were meant to turn away evil.

So if you look around this room you'll see this perimeter of lions' heads.

Part of the convention of temple architecture is at their entrances, they would place two, large-horned bulls.

Yes... Manitoba's bison.

Yes?

And if you look up above you'll find these cattle skulls which are part of an ancient language of temple architecture.

And the architect here believed that certain numbers contained certain harmonious proportions and he incorporated them into the design of this building.

The dimensions of this room, the grandest staircase in all of Canada is exactly as follows: It is sixty six feet, six inches in width and sixty six feet, six inches in length.

My utter amazement when I found this in the original drawings is that the architect penciled in the center of this room six, six, six.

But it gets worse.

The exterior of this building - if you add up the length and its width - it's exactly, on the nose, 666 feet.

Now of course the association you're all making now is -- Brandy Yanchyk: The Devil.

(laughter) People generally associate the occult with devil worship.

But it's actually a very important part of western civilization.

The occult simply means 'that which is hidden' and that which is hidden, in this building - it takes you on a discovery of understanding how architects built things and in particular the secrets of Freemasons.

Brandy: The architect's fascination with Freemasonry helped to inspire all these secret codes.

(Author) Freemasons were responsible for building the great cathedrals of Europe and then by around the 18th century they morphed into this institution that we today recognize, a fraternity and in this fraternity they learn about the history of architecture.

So they're a secret society or - as they like to describe themselves - a society with secrets.

This is a room that is in the east of the building.

It's the only room in the building that has this cord as you will notice.

And this cord is here to make sure no one enters.

So there must be something very important about this room not even the premier's office has this cord.

I met the Prince of Wales in this room and I said, "Sir, imagine we are standing in a room which is the only room in the world that is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Where am I standing?"

And there we were, standing in this room.

And he thought about it for a second and he said.

"It can only be King Solomon's Temple."

And this room exactly mirrors the holy of holies of King Solomon's Temple.

This is the office of the lieutenant governor, the highest appointed person of the queen.

The kind of quasi-high priest that brings royal assent to all laws in Parliament, amazing.

A room that is only opened once a year.

It's called the New Year's Levy.

So here we have an association between secular... authority and ancient religious power.

The architect opened this building in 1920 and he said nothing in this building is placed by ornament.

It's all done according to the will of a higher design.

Because if you read in the Book of Kings we're told that the Ark of the Covenant was veiled by an ornately woven blue curtain.

Now what do you see there?

Tourist: Oh, my goodness!

Albo: An ornately woven blue curtain.

And if you go beyond the ornately wolven blue curtain that takes you outside.

And if you go outside and you look directly above this room and no other room in this two hundred and fifty thousand square foot temple.

You find this , the Ark of the Covenant.

There is no other building like this that I'm aware of in the world.

A building which has one superficial function and then beneath it has a much deeper function.

It's a building that is meant to make you a better person just by its sheer design.

The architect believed that the various elements that he's included in here is meant to have an impression upon you, to make you more... intelligent.

Beneath this dome you find the following sequence: five, eight and thirteen.

Isn't that a rather curious sign to place beneath a dome?

Five, eight and thirteen, what does that look like?

The sign of the cross.

Brandy: I never would have imagined all of the symbols and clues that are in here - right in your plain sight.

It's so wonderful that Frank took the time to study all those years so that we could find out.

♪ piano (jet noise) (Brandy) I'm here in Saskatoon Saskatchewan at the Berry Barn where they grow the famous Saskatoon berries.

It's why the city has its name and I'm here to meet Dale Mackay, a celebrity chef who's going to explain to me why he's come back to his hometown.

Brandy: OK, so how do we know which ones we can pick?

Well let's go a little higher up here -- pull down a branch here and you can kind of tell the difference of some of them are starting to dry up on the on berry which, you know a lot of the time we produce the dried berries and you can use them all winter.

But then if they're kind of plump-looking like these ones right here, they're ready for the pick.

Wow, can I taste one now?

Yeah, do it!

Alright.

Yum, it's good.

Yum.. How did you get into this?

How did you get into cooking?

I quit school at fourteen and moved to Vancouver at fifteen.

On my fifteenth birthday and I started washing dishes in a chain restaurant and I just kind of went from it started cooking.

Somebody didn't show up to work one day and I got put on line and I literally never stopped cooking since that day.

So I just went from a better place to a better place.

I never went to culinary school or any of that kind of stuff.

I just decided to keep working and it's turned out OK.

So you're really self-taught.

Yeah- I mean, I've had some very good mentors.

You know I worked for - I was with Gordon Ramsay for almost seven years and I got to open up - because I think about twelve restaurants with him at that time throughout those years.

And then I was with Daniel Boulud for about three years as well out of New York.

Do you think that you, being here, has changed Saskatoon in any way?

MacKay: It's exciting to be in this - in a smaller city like Saskatoon and give people a new concept like Sticks and Stones our latest one you know with the Japanese/Korean.

The design is very cool and feels, you know like you could be in Brooklyn or in Tokyo or anywhere.

You know, for years... Saskatoon had the most restaurants per capita in Canada.

So we've always had a ton of restaurants but I think we just needed to kind of needed to up the game on the quality and bringing, bringing some new ideas and some new, new things into town.

Brandy: That's very cool.

Do we have enough?

Yep.

Mmm, very good.

(chuckles) Brandy: I'm here with chef Dale MacKay at his restaurant "Ayden Kitchen and Bar."

He's going to show me what we can do with those Saskatoon berries.

Yeah.

So there's so many things we can with Saskatoon berries.

So, we're going to do - One of my favourite pies, in general, is buttermilk pies.

I love a little bit of tang and that kind of stuff and the Saskatoon berries go really well with buttermilk because they are a little bit savoury as well.

So we are going to take a little bit of pie dough that I made earlier and get this rolled out and then we'll make the filling.

And we'll make ourselves a buttermilk pie.

Mmmmmmmm... ♪ upbeat funk ♪ music continues with chatter (laughter) ♪ music continues Alright.

Here we go.

Beautiful.

Alright, so we got our Saskatoon Berry buttermilk pie, again one of favorite pies ever.

I love the buttermilk and obviously I love the Saskatoon berries.

And when you put in the berries like that you can kind of see how the sugar and everything starts kind of caramelizing all around the berries.

I can't wait to eat it.

Slide your knife out.

Yeah, just add a slice of pie and maybe some ice cream or something depending on what it's for.

Mmmm.

Good?

You know what the best part is?

It's the lemon.

Yeah.

Thanks Dale.

Thanks for showing me all these wonderful things.

Maybe I'll take up some cooking.

Now you know a few things.

♪ music continues ♪ (traffic noise) ♪ Native drumming and chanting Just outside the city of Saskatoon is Wanuskewin Heritage Park.

People have been coming here to meet for over six thousand years and it's a great place to learn about First Nations and archaeology.

Bonnie is my guide at Wanuskewin.

She teaches visitors about traditional hunting tools - like Atl-Atl.

It's called Atl Atl because it means arm-arm.

Arm, arm meaning it gives you an extra arm.

So before, when we had spears when you throw the spear you can only go a certain distance so your aim was good - but you need an extra arm to make you go further.

So hence this beautiful thing right here.

Here I'll give you an example.

These would have been the arrows, examples of arrows that would have been used you gotta look for those straight shafts.

And this would be for hunting... bison?

Bison, elk, deer.

Okay, and usually you would have just thrown this.

Is what you're saying?

Well this one is an arrow form so... it would have been an attachment to either a bow or in this case an Atl Atl.

OK.

So there's two ways to hold it with your "peace" fingers.

You put your fingers through these little holes there and then you hold it like a club.

Or you can hold it like a bat.

Either way two fingers will always go through there.

You don't throw an arrow sideways the way that you throw an arrow... is you keep the whole thing straight.

You want to point to where you're shooting at.

In this case say I'm going to point at the Bison there.

I'm going to take a step and go... shoot!

Well, I kind of got it.

I got its toe.

So, I keep it straight.

Good!

Better... better!

Look at that!

Okay, try this one.

Yeah!!!!

Interpreter: Better!

Yeah.... High five!

It feels really good to do that.

Okay I want to do more.

What was that?

♪ mandolin strumming Brandy: For those who love archaeology there's a special treat here at Wanuskewin.

I'm here with Dr. Ernie Walker who can tell me a bit about what makes this place so unique.

Well this is the longest, continuously running archaeological research project in Canadian history and we've been here thirty-eight years, almost forty years - every year, doing high level archaeological research.

What's so special about it?

There are nineteen sites in the park that have a long, pre-contact archaeological record.

What we're looking at, this is a little remote area of a site called Wolf Willow.

And it was a campsite.

In the upper levels, it's about 500 to 700 years old and down in the bottom levels between 4,000 and 4,400 years.

These are stones I can see.

More of a circular arrangement to this, so it's a feature.

Once I take it apart, then it's pretty much gone forever.

This one, if I can just remove it slightly.

That is a fragment of a rib of a bison.

So it's from a rib.

It's just a little segment of it.

And that will be probably about 700 years old.

Brandy: 700 years old, Bonnie.

Walker: So this is pre-contact.

This is a one square meter excavation block.

So these would be fifty centimeter excavation squares.

We call them quads.

And so the idea is that you want to excavate this site, you want to take the floor down flat.

You don't want to start digging holes because invariably you're going to dig down into a deeper level and you're starting to mix artifacts.

Walker: But these are magnificent sites.

These are just tremendous.

Yep, that's a little bone frag.

Brandy: You're good at this, Bonnie.

Walker: It's very tiny.

So what we normally do, this is called a frag bag.

So put all the little tiny frags in there.

I can definitely see how this could be described as, backbreaking work... and tedious.

Yes.

(chuckles) Oh!

What was that?

That's a rock?

No?

Nope, that is a-- it's a piece of shatter.

It's the right kind of stone to make a stone tool.

And while they're bashing these rocks and pieces are flying off.

That's a little piece of waste but it is a cultural item.

Wow.

OK. What's the next step here, because I don't think I'm very lucky.

It's just there is no, it's not a matter of luck.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

You still found a fragment.

I found one, yes!

We did find.

Two, two things.

One each.

I wanted to win, but we're equal.

So, we've got a pretty full pail here.

So what do you say we give this <sure> a screen?

Okay and then you come down where I am and shake it back and forth.

By myself?

There we go.

Okay.

Cool!

Now... we usually just toss all these roots out.

We've got a lot of roots in here.

That's a little bit of bone.

Bone?

I found a bone in mine.

I'm winning!

If we discount the two that Ernie found in your quad.

OK. Bonnie it's your turn.

My turn?

Yep, just dump it in.

And I don't see... Ordinarily you don't want to find stuff in here it's just sort of a check because small stuff, you can sometimes miss it.

No, yep, I think we're good.

Well thank you Dr. Walker for showing us this insight into your world and we really appreciate it.

My pleasure.

Thanks for coming by.

♪ drumming Brandy: It's fascinating to think that for 6,000 years people have come here to meet.

I've learned so much at Wanuskewin about the First Nations and I can't help but imagine all the stories and artifacts that are still hidden under the ground here.

♪ drumming and flute