Joseph Rosendo's Steppin' Out

-It's said a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Welcome to "Joseph Rosendo's Steppin' Out."

In celebration of my 20th anniversary on PBS and Create TV, we're steppin' out and celebrating Canada, coast to coast.

[ Thudding ] [ Shouting ] -"Joseph Rosendo's Steppin' Out" is made possible by... -Since 1975, we've inspired adults to learn and travel in the United States and in more than 100 countries.

From exploring our national parks to learning about art and culture in Italy, we've introduced adults to places, ideas, and friends.

We are Road Scholar.

We make the world our classroom.

-This anniversary episode of "Steppin' Out" celebrates the land, the cultures, and the people of Canada.

Over the decades, in print, on radio, on PBS with "Joseph Rosendo's Travelscope" and "Steppin' Out", I've had the privilege to share with you our grand and glorious northern neighbor.

I've traveled the country from north to south and coast to coast, highlighting Canada's breathtaking natural wonders, its resilient First Nations people, and its diverse cities.

Located in Ontario, Canada's second largest province.

Toronto is the country's most populous metropolis.

For a unique perspective on the city, I began my explorations at the CN tower, one of the world's tallest.

-Come on out, Joseph.

All right, there ya go.

Whoo!

Welcome out.

So, guys, I'd like to welcome you out to the EdgeWalk.

You are currently 356 meters above the earth.

-1,000 feet?

-1,168 feet.

Precise.

-Exactly.

-I'm not sure if it looks like it, but it is.

We're gonna be walking along around this ring.

It's 150 meters around the tower, -450 feet?

And it's 1.5 meters wide, this platform.

So it's about the width of a city sidewalk, the safest sidewalk in all of Toronto, eh?

-Just taking a stroll on the edge is enough for me, but not for our walk master Dizzy, who gets us to perform a high altitude trick.

-Can you guess what it is?

-Down.

-And out you go.

Right to the edge.

Oh, you're fearless.

-Whoo!

-Whoa!

-Nice!

One, two, three... -Hello, Toronto!

-Whoo!

They heard you.

-It's a thrill to look down on Toronto from the heights.

But the heart and soul of the city is at street level in its multicultural neighborhoods.

A town of a hundred languages and dialects, half of Toronto's population is foreign born.

Close to half a million people make Toronto's Italian population one of the city's largest, as well as oldest ethnic communities.

Well, Bruce, here we are in Little Italy, doing what a good Italian should do.

-Sure.

-Having a cappuccino.

Now, what is the boundaries of Little Italy here in Toronto?

-Well, we're on College Street now.

All the signs here will tell you you're in Little Italy, and it goes from one side, which is Spadina Avenue, about maybe 15, 20 blocks down to Ossington Avenue.

-What role did they fill here?

I mean, how did they serve the city?

-Well, originally a lot of the Italian craftsmen were brought over from Italy to build these, you know, the great mansions towards the end of the 19th century, doing the plaster ceiling work, the mosaic floors of these, and beautiful buildings that they built.

It's always been said that Toronto was built by the Italians.

-Oh, how did they fit in with the people that were already here?

What are the challenges?

-At first, there was a lot of prejudice.

The British that were here didn't like the ethnic groups that were coming in from Europe.

And on a Sunday afternoon, Italian men sitting outside having cappuccinos on the sidewalk was unheard of by the British establishment.

But slowly it developed that people started to say, listen, we're going to make a real push to understand what is your culture and share your culture.

-So instead of a melting pot philosophy, it was more of a multicultural philosophy.

-Yes, and that's what it's become today.

-Well, we're off to a good start with our cappuccino here in Little Italy, and we're going to have some more cultural taste of Toronto.

-You bet, sir.

Toronto's Asian population has long spiced up its multicultural mix.

Today, the city boasts six Chinese neighborhoods with old Chinatown along Spadina Avenue welcoming the newest arrivals.

So we're in Chinatown, and the Chinese immigrant population is one of the most important here in Toronto city of immigrants and many cultures.

-In fact, yes, there's about half a million Chinese residents in Toronto.

-When did they first start coming over?

-Uh, the majority of the Chinese immigration came just after World War II, probably around 1949, 1950.

-And has this always been a place where first immigrants came?

-Absolutely.

In fact, the Jewish neighborhood, this actually was originally the Jewish market.

And in more recent years, that market has now obviously absorbed many different groups, the Chinese, Cambodian, and Laos, people from Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asian.

You know, I always say, if you need something, you can always find it in Chinatown.

-[ Chuckles ] -Okay, so this is the famous Dumpling House on Spadina.

This is a classic example of how Chinatown continues to evolve and bring in new people from other parts of the world.

-Right.

-The Sun family has been operating this business here since 2005, and they have their own special style of Beijing dumplings.

They're actually boiled instead of steamed.

And most interestingly, they actually have a dumpling crepe.

So it's like a large crepe with all these different dumplings inside.

-Ah.

-Beautiful.

-John, whenever I come to Toronto, I'm having food with you.

-You're always welcome, Joseph.

-[ Speaking global language ] -Let's eat.

-There's much more to enjoy in northeast Ontario, Canada, than Toronto's citified pleasures.

Just north of Canada's largest city is the breathtaking beauty of the French River wilderness.

-Un, deux, trois... [ Grunting ] [ Thudding ] [ Cheering ] -To paddle the French River route of the French Voyageurs is a 65 mile canoe trip from Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay.

Wow.

Whoopee!

-That was fun.

-Yeah.

-The Group of Seven, they founded the Canadian School of Painting here in Canada.

The whole philosophy behind the Group of Seven was finding some place that's really beautiful and immersing yourself in nature.

And they stood for all the arts of Canada, including theater, dance, poetry.

But to get your inspiration from nature.

-It's almost like a tradition with artists because I'm thinking about Yosemite.

In the early days when they were trying to make it a national park, artists came out and depicted these amazing scenes, and that was a way to publicize it to people who couldn't see it, that this is a place that needs to be protected.

The highlight of my Northeast Ontario adventure is a serendipitous encounter with Canada's First Nations people on Manitoulin Islands.

There are eight First Nations communities on Manitoulin Island, and all are invited to the annual cultural festival and public powwow at Wiikwemkoong.

54th Annual Wiikwemkoong Cultural Festival is a celebration of culture and festival, and at the heart of it is the powwow.

This is a competition powwow where dancers, drummers, and singers from all over Canada come to compete for prizes.

But whether it's a competition powwow or a traditional powwow, at the heart of every First Nation celebration is spirit.

[ Chanting rhythmically ] [ Chanting rhythmically ] Lorralene, that dancing was beautiful.

I mean, I love the jingle dance when I've seen other First Nations dance.

That's one of my favorite.

And I understand that the jingle dress has a story that relates to somebody who was ill, and then they danced for them, and they got better.

-This dance is a medicine dress, and it's made for healing.

When we dance to the song, sick people can heal.

-Now, tell me about your fan.

-My fan is an eagle tail.

It was my grandmother's fan.

My grandmother's proud that I use it.

She's really proud, yeah.

-Well, thank you.

It was such a gift you gave us with your dancing.

It was beautiful.

-Thank you.

[ Chanting rhythmically ] -Adam, that was incredible.

And it was a chicken dance, right?

-Yeah.

We're mimicking the mating dance of the prairie chicken or the grouse.

They mark their territory, and then they dance for it.

If there's another male trying to come in, rather than going over there and trying to fluff up and kick him off the territory, he picks up his dance.

It's really just trying to get that attention of the females.

-Now, the regalia that you have on, are their significance to the designs that you've chosen?

-My beadwork is actually my grandfather's.

-You have a fabulous necklace.

-Yeah, this was my grandfather's, as well.

The claws look small, but it's the back claw of a grizzly.

-So you have all that energy with you when you're out there dancing?

-Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

[ Chanting rhythmically ] [ Cheering ] -From coast to coast, Canada is almost 5,000 miles.

An east to west journey takes you from the Canadian Shield to the towering Rockies and across the vast landscape, which includes the great prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

Alberta Canada, is as large as Texas and coincidentally famous for its cowboy heritage, as well as its scenic Rocky Mountain national parks such as Banff, Jasper, and Waterton Lakes.

Known as the Prairie Province, there are plenty of wide open spaces where once millions of North American buffalo roamed and First Nations people followed.

For thousands of years before there were national parks and cowboys, what is now Alberta was the land of the buffalo and the Blackfoot First Nations people.

Some of the earliest signs of their existence can be found at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park among the hoodoo, in the largest concentration of rock art on the Great Plains.

-Joseph, come up and have a look at this and see what you can make out.

-As you look at these circles... -Mm-hmm.

-...maybe try to imagine what you think they might be.

-A drum?

-Good guess.

-Oh, shields for a battle.

-They are.

-And here is the end result of the battle, perhaps.

Here's two bodies it looks like to me.

-And that's one interpretation.

However, some feel it's just one dead person and that's their spirit leaving the body.

-That would make sense.

-It certainly would in view of the fact this is a burial ground.

-Well, you know, we can't leave this spot without saying something about the more recent petroglyphs.

-Yes, we see a lot of graffiti.

Many of our visitors ask, is it not going to someday be just as valuable as these petroglyphs?

As you look at Hutchinson, can you tell me what that person looked like?

-Not at all.

-What they did for a living, how did they dress, what did they eat.

-The most significant thing he did here was be here.

-Exactly but for these people, tells us the story of not only an individual, but their culture, their way of life, that not only they owned horses, they must have known how to train them.

They were riding them, and they were buffalo hunters.

-The people of the plains survived using their native intelligence, creativity, and ingenuity.

The next morning, I head towards the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to perhaps the most significant First Nations site in Alberta.

At Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, Natives hunted buffalo by cleverly capitalizing on the animals habits and weaknesses.

While the buffalo possessed a good sense of smell, they were short sighted.

Cloaked in buffalo skins and bleating like a calf, young buffalo runners lure the herd from their grazing grounds towards driving lanes, defined by cairns created from tree branches and stones.

The driving lanes extending for miles lead to the edge of the 120 foot drop.

On a signal, tribal members race up from behind the herd, waving buffalo hides, and the stampede begins.

Other hunters hidden behind the cairns funnel the herd towards the inevitable.

By the time the lead buffalo senses the danger, it is too late.

The thundering pack carries it and themselves over the precipice.

Besides being a chronicle of the ancient ways and a repository of its relics, the Interpretive Center is also a venue for teaching about and rejoicing in the First Nations traditions.

Throughout the summer months, visitors can hear the stories of Alberta's Aboriginal people being told through their music, song, and dance.

[ Chanting rhythmically ] As a family, what does it feel to know that what you are continuing to do really is an important thing to your culture?

-It's our existence.

It's like breathing.

It's just who we are.

We don't really think about it.

We just go do it, and we feel good when we do it.

-By honoring their past, the Blackfoot are recapturing, preserving, and celebrating their heritage.

Strangely enough, the ranchers who first came to southern Alberta after the Blackfoot's buffalo way of life had disappeared are striving to save their cowboy culture.

For more than a century, ranching has prospered here.

Well, you've certainly made a life of it here.

-Well, I guess I was a kid that always wanted to be a rancher and should have been born 100 years earlier, but I wasn't.

So I just have lived on a horse, and I've had my kids ride with me, and now they all love horses.

And so ranching is our way of life.

-Near the town of Lethbridge, Fort Hamilton, known as Fort Whoop-Up, was established in 1869 by Americans Alfred Hamilton and John Healy, who crossed the Medicine Line into Canada in order to trade freely with the Blackfoot and other First Nations people.

Fort Whoop-Up National Historic Site introduces visitors to one of the most notorious of the so-called whiskey forts.

Using the whiskey was an opportunity for them to take advantage of the Blackfoot.

Getting them liquored up was a good way of trading.

-It would have been appropriate to give the chiefs a cup of sherry and a feast and stuff before the trade started.

And of course, well, now the North-West Company, they're giving the guy two cups of sherry and we're only giving them one.

So now we got to start giving them two cups.

So you start to see alcohol move from a lubricant in the trade to an actual commodity.

And it is true.

The winter of 1873, there were 73 Blackfoot that died from over-excesses, exposure, alcoholism, fighting, just all of the things that go with a bad party.

But trading liquor wasn't against the law.

-It wasn't against the law at that time.

While the whiskey traders were whooping it up and reaping rich rewards from the trading, as far as the Blackfoot were concerned, the practice was a mixed blessing.

-Yes, there was, you know, the negative component of, you know, the whiskey and how it brought agony and despair, you know, to my people.

But there was also the opportunity to get new items because the fur traders brought a lot of metal, which was very important to my people, and it made things a lot easier.

-So this fort is as much a part of the Blackfoot people as it is the white traders that were here, as well.

Well, we've been very excited to learn about your people.

And I would normally in this moment say thank you.

But I understand that the Blackfoot people don't really say thank you.

They basically just take your words and accept them into your heart.

Is that right?

-Yes.

Yeah.

That's accepting and... -Sokpiiwa.

-Yeah.

-[ Chuckles ] Epitomizing Canada's blend of cultural diversity and natural grandeur, the Cariboo-Chilcotin coast region of British Columbia lives up to its motto -- "land without limits."

Here, you're off the beaten track in a coastal, mountain, and back country wilderness.

The three parts of the region are characterized by the Cariboo Mountains in the east, the central Chilcotin Plateau, and the coastal fjord lands in the west.

The Bella Coola Valley stretches 50 miles from the base of the Chilcotin Plateau to the head of the fjord, where I began my explorations.

Like many indigenous people, the New Hawk Nation and their culture nearly disappeared.

During the smallpox epidemic of 1862, a pre-European contact population of 35,000 was reduced to 240 souls.

Survivors were placed on a reservation and in government residential schools.

New Hawk language, ceremonies, and art were forbidden and almost forgotten.

Only recently have the New Hawk once again embraced their culture.

What are you working on here?

-I'm just making a poll.

-Just making a poll?

-Yeah, this is a memorial poll, but it also describes a lot of New Hawk.

-So it's a history of the New Hawk people, but also a personal history of the man who just died.

-Yeah, top one there is the son and the four carpenters.

And those are the hands that the four carpenters used to build our New Hawk world.

So I want to keep a poll here in my hometown.

Young people can see it.

-That's wonderful.

I understand you're one of the last people who still speak the New Hawk language.

What is being done to help preserve the language?

-Yeah, they're teaching them in the school and have language classes for the adults that never, ever spoke our language.

-Well, how about thank you?

-[ Speaking New Hawk language ] -[ Repeats in New Hawk language ] Thank you for having me here.

While usually heritage is passed down to the next generation among the New Hawk, the upswing in cultural preservation has also received its impetus from younger members like Silyas' son.

What are you working on, Skip?

-I'm working on a finback whale.

It's actually, what it is is a crest.

One of my family's crests.

Some of these pieces that we have haven't been reproduced for 30, 40, 50 years.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-What's bringing it back?

-Identity.

In the last 10 years or so, 15 years, there's been a resurgence of people wanting this stuff in their lives now.

It tells you who they are.

Last night, we just had a talk about that, like preserving our culture.

And he was saying, "Skip, man, I really appreciate what you're doing."

It just sent chills up my spine, right?

You know, these guys really appreciate it, right?

And I never thought of it as that.

This, for me, is not just a form of art, it's a form of meditation.

I live and breathe this.

At this one meeting, I stood up and I said, "Our culture's just about dying, you know, our masks are dying."

And this elder stood up, and he said, "They're not dying, they're just asleep."

I said, "Well, I guess I'm here to wake it up then, right?"

-As opposed to the coastal part of the region, the Chilcotin stretches from the coastal mountains to the Fraser River.

It is a 300 square mile plateau where you'll find grasslands and guest ranches, rivers, streams, lakes, and fishing lodges.

Located in the western Chilcotin, Stewart's Lodge on Nimpo Lake is a gateway to outdoor adventures that include world class hiking, canoeing, and fishing.

There may be lakes and rivers that run through it, but there are no roads.

A floatplane is the best way to explore the Chilcotin wilderness.

First stop -- Turnor Lake for a walk to spectacular Hunlen Falls.

-And here it is.

This is Hunlen Falls, and it's, you know, over 1000 feet straight down.

-I understand it's the third highest waterfall in Canada.

-It comes right out of this Turnor Lake that we landed on in the floatplane.

And then it runs down through the Bella Coola Valley and comes out the ocean at Bella Coola.

-This is such a beautiful remote area, but we are not alone here.

-That's right.

There's a few mosquitoes.

-A few trillion mosquitoes have come to greet us here.

-It's been a wet season.

-Thank you for bringing us out here.

This is beautiful.

From the expansive Chilcotin plateau, I journey east across the Fraser River into the Cariboo.

Bowron Lakes Provincial Park is noted for its 72 mile canoe circuit, where paddlers travel through a chain of lakes and connecting rivers, streams, and portages, and after about a week end up where they began.

-What I think is one of the crown jewels of the park is right here in the bower and marsh.

It's just a half day trip from the head of the lake system.

It's surrounded by beautiful mountains, and it's just teeming with wildlife.

Look, there's a moose, Joseph, on the left.

-Wow.

-This is one of the great things about the bower and marsh.

It's an ideal moose habitat.

-Is that a newborn?

-That calf is two, three weeks old right now.

Listen, you can hear it mooing a bit.

It's talking to its mom.

-Yeah.

-Oh, look.

There it goes.

Beautiful, isn't it?

-Wonderful.

-This is the ideal situation.

You know, when they come to you.

Can't quite see, but it might actually be looking to suckle on that cow right now.

That's how comfortable they are with us.

-I think that's pretty great.

-Yeah.

Isn't that amazing?

-It's kind of a compliment, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Yeah, now that calf's gonna have to start swimming in here.

-He can swim across this?

-Yeah, they can swim almost immediately.

Oh, this is amazing.

-Oh my... [ Laughing ] -Oh, dear.

-This is a tourism poster.

-I'm not sure how to make it any nicer for you than this.

-Beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful.

Thank you for helping me honor my 20 years on PBS and Create TV by stepping out with me and celebrating Canada coast to coast.

Until we meet again, remember the words of Mark Twain -- travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.

May your next adventure always be your best.

-"Joseph Rosendo's Steppin Out" is made possible by... -Since 1975, we've inspired adults to learn and travel in the United States and in more than 100 countries.

From exploring our national parks to learning about art and culture in Italy, we've introduced adults to places, ideas, and friends.

We are Road Scholar.

We make the world our classroom.

-For a DVD of the "Travel Scope" and "Steppin' Out" episodes featured in my anniversary show, and to get my memoir and travel book "Musings", call (888) 876-3399.

Or, to order online, go to Travelscope.net, JosephRosendo.com, or email me at [email protected].

Now that we've stepped out and celebrated the best of Canada together, learn more at JosephRosendo.com, where you can follow my worldwide adventures through my magazine, blog, podcast, and social media.

Stay in touch -- 888-876-3399.

Or email me at [email protected].

It's Canada Day or Dominion Day, and there's lots of festivities going on, a parade and lots of fun and games.

-Whoo!

-[ Loud bang ] -Happy Dominion Day!

-Happy Dominion Day.

-In Barkerville, the folks who re-enact the past live it with such fervor that after a day of being here, I've caught their spirit, and I'm living it myself.

[ Cheering ] Thank you so much.

That was so nice.

Stepping out