Brett & Beaver was a Canadian animated television series created by Stockwell McNight. The series was first broadcast in 1978 on CBC1 and became enormously popular in Manitoba, Labrador and Eastern British Columbia over its 7-year run. The music for the show was created by Film Boards of Canada and made use of cutting-edge synthesizer technology.
Notably, the show prefigured several real-world events in Canadian history years before their actual occurrence.
This page is my partial archive of episodes, inspired by Jordan Minor’s pioneering work with the Street Sharks cartoon. Many people outside Canada are unaware of cultural sensations such as Rocky and Bullwinkle (Canadian Looney Tunes), Captain Canuck (Canadian Superman), Honeymoon Suite (Canadian Flock of Seagulls), Candi (Canadian Madonna) and Moses Znaimer (Canadian Marshall McLuhan) – this page is my attempt at bringing more Canadian culture to the world.
| No. Overall | Title | Written By | First Air Date | Prod. Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 07 | “Resource Curse”1 | Stockwell McNight Barb O’Shea (?) | October 14, 1979 | Q77888 |
| Synopsis |
|---|
| Brett and Beaver are working at the lumber mill, when a sudden bumper harvest of trees has Boss Goldsworthy turn them into Entrepreneurs in Residence. “Find out what we can do with all these extra trees!” the Boss exclaims. Brett and Beaver start with an idea for producing wooden bowls and plates on a small scale. Soon, they begin coming up with novel ideas for other businesses: producing skateboards, terracotta pots, selling telephones, personal computers (PCs) and even dabbling in the emerging technology of “3D Printing”. The businesses aren’t profitable right away and the Boss refuses to fund every one of them. “None of these newfangled ideas of yours are as profitable as our established business. If a new business is not immediately as profitable as our old lumber business, then I won’t waste time on it!”. At the end of the episode, an American lumber baron purchases the mill. The mill continues to produce raw lumber. We see how the lumber is transported to the USA, transformed into useful finished products, and sold back to Canadians at a 200% markup. The American owners are very satisfied, while Brett and Beaver resume their old positions at the lumber mill. |
| No. Overall | Title | Written By | First Air Date | Prod. Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 08 | “National Champion” | Stockwell McNight | November 6, 1979 | 67G4GC |
| Synopsis |
|---|
| While out building a dam, Beaver hears loud yelling. The yelling comes from his company’s lumberjacks trying to talk over large distances. Spotting a business opportunity, Brett and Beaver decide to start a business selling walkie-talkies and communication services to lumberjacks. They call it North-Yell Networks. North-Yell grows until they are the main telecommunications provider for lumberjacks in Northern British Columbia. At that point, Madagascar’s national telecommunication provider Hwy Wait Networks tries to muscle in on their market. The advance is led by businessman Bakoly Baovola and his rare Madagascan panda Veronica. Hwy Wait Networks are connected to the King of Madagascar and have the country’s spy network at their disposal. The spies tracks, photograph and eavesdrop on Brett and Beaver. After a walkie-talkie wiretapping incident, Brett complains to Sheriff Shirley who dismisses him and says “There are no foreign spies on Canadian soil! How preposterous! We are the most beloved country in the world!”. North-Yell begins losing customers to Hwy Wait. A major deal with the Alberta Alder-Fellers Brotherhood has the potential to save Brett and Beaver’s business. When it comes time to negotiate, Hwy Wait wins the bid by providing the service at far below its true cost. North-Yell loses the critical deal and goes bankrupt. Over beers with Sheriff Shirley, the Sheriff exclaims “It’s eerie, boys. Almost like they knew every move you were planning to make, eh?!” Beaver delivers a monologue, asking “How can Canadian entrepreneurs compete against foreign government-backed businesses when – even on Canadian soil – their own government permits this unfair advantage?”. None of the other patrons in the bar hear his monologue.2 Brett and Beaver return to their jobs at the lumber mill. |
| No. Overall | Title | Written By | First Air Date | Prod. Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | “Gander” | Ryan “Gosling” Swanson Barb O’shea | September 3, 1980 | 77L43L |
| Synopsis |
|---|
| After discovering that he is 1/64th Black, Brett refashions himself as soft-rapper Gander. His apology-rock3 tune Beg Your Pardon catapults him to sudden fame. Brett and Beaver move to Miami, where they follow up with Canadian love ballad May We Possibly Be Friends, gangsta-rap tune Castoreum In Yo Ice-Cream and Christmas rap Under The Beavertail. Brett’s ego gets too big as he re-christens the city of Nanaimo as “The N9ine”, against the residents’ wishes. When Brett starts a “beef” with talented rapper Dandruff LaBeuff, it is revealed that Brett may have fathered a secret daughter. Public opinion turns against Brett as he is accused of Transporting an Endangered Rodent Across State Lines and illegally keeping a pet beaver. Destitute, Brett & Beaver beat a hasty retreat to Canada. The episode ends with them returning to their former jobs at the lumber mill. |
| No. Overall | Title | Written By | First Air Date | Prod. Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 | “Cultural Legos” | Ernie Falwell Stephen Brophen | January 20, 1983 | 2P7B37 |
| Synopsis |
|---|
| A natural disaster in Nunavut brings a wave of Inuit refugees to Brett and Beaver’s town. Beaver decides to make the newcomers welcome by starting a culinary exchange. Brett and Beaver become obsessed with Inuit delicacies such as beluga blubber, seal meat and bison burgers. Mayor Marigold decides to double down on culinary exchanges, picnics and food-festivals. After 6 months of gorging himself, Brett realizes that he knows practically nothing about the culture, language and history of his new neighbour – only their food. They live in a separate part of town and there are no opportunities for talking with them. Brett is alarmed to discover that many of the newcomers do not speak English and aren’t aware of the same town facilities and services that longtime residents benefit from. Brett and Beaver deliver an impassioned plea to Town Council, saying that the townspeople are missing an opportunity to learn from the rich perspective and deep culture of the Inuit arrivals; while the Inuit are missing out on the benefits of integrating into their new hometown. Mayor Marigold dismisses Brett’s arguments, explaining that “We live according to a concept called Cultural Legos4 where each colour is separated and stays in it’s own bin. What a mess it would be if we mixed all these Legos together in one big bin!”. Brett and beaver return to their job at the lumber mill. |
| No. Overall | Title | Written By | First Air Date | Prod. Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 | “Mein Camp” | Ernie Falwell Stephen Brophen | February 23, 1983 | 2924JP |
| Synopsis |
|---|
| Troubled by the arrival of newcomers from the North, a group of townsmen set up a special tent camp with no “outsiders” allowed. Brett is troubled by their hate and vows to take them down. The camp leader falls madly in love and runs away with beautiful Valkyrie Mitford (from Swastika, Ontario) – and that is just the opening that Brett was waiting for. Brett approaches Sheriff Shirley and officially goes undercover at the camp. Vowing to take them down, Brett swiftly rises through the ranks by being quick to violence and by recruiting many members to the cause. Sheriff Shirley provides cash and supplies to the group “so that their future takedown is even more crushing”. Beaver is disturbed and warns Brett: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Brett becomes leader of the hate camp. After an Inuit house is spraypainted, local journalist November O’Brien discovers that this group of xenophobes is led by an undercover police agent5. Brett is ashamed of how far astray he had gone. Brett faces no consequences after Mayor Marigold gives beseeches the townspeople to forget about the whole sordid affair: “After all, there is no racism in Canada – racism is something that only happens elsewhere 6“. Chastened, Brett and Beaver return to their old jobs at the lumber mill. |
- Resource Curse is an economic phenomenon where a country that is rich in a natural resource focuses on extracting that resource, and neglects other parts of it’s economy. Like what happens in a “Petro-State”.
This episode also foresaw the takeover of Canada’s resource industries by foreign owners, sometimes in tragicomic ways. ↩︎ - This episode bears an uncanny resemblance to the real-world downfall of Nortell Networks. Series creator Stockwell McNight was rumoured to be a participant of Canada’s Remote Viewing program. For the rest of his life, Stockwell would have attacks he described as “becoming unmoored in time and space”. McNight would come out of these episodes with notes he used to inform his stock picking decisions. In later life, when he left the TV business, McNight was to become one of Canada’s wealthiest investors. ↩︎
- The genre of “Apology Rock” is mainstream in Canada. Examples include “Sorry” by Justin Bieber, “Beg Your Pardon” by Kon Kan and “Sorry Not Sorry” by Bryson Tiller. This sound is closely related to the Polite Canadian Breakup genre exemplified by the track “New Girl Now” by Honeymoon Suite – and their classic lyric, “I got a new girl now. And she’s a lot like you!”. ↩︎
- Likely a reference to the “Cultural Mosaic“. I’ll tell you, living in the Greater Toronto Area – it is very easy to try cuisines from all over the world, but nobody is helping people go beyond that and truly understand the different cultures in the city. ↩︎
- Strikingly, this episode prefigured the 1994 “Operation Governor” fiasco, where Canadian intelligence service CSIS funded the creation and operation of a racist hate group, Heritage Front. Grant Bristow, Chief Security officer of Heritage Front, was a CSIS mole and faced no consequences for being exceptionally effective as a racist, and lacking as an agent. ↩︎
- This is almost certainly sarcasm on the part of the writers. Canada has a rich history of racism that is unacknowledged in Canadian society. It begins with the well known and long-lived residential schools, meant to ethnically cleanse the native population (the last of these closed in 1997). From 1885 to 1948, Canada had a special “Chinese Head Tax” to ensure that Chinese people did not settle in the country. In 1939, Canada was one of the countries that explicitly refused entry to a ship full of refugees fleeing the Nazis. The incident coined the phrase “None is too many” when it came to Jewish immigration into Canada. After WWII, Canada rolled out a welcome mat for Nazi collaborators who wanted to escape justice – specifically the Ukrainian Nationalist death squads. Nowadays, numerous memorials to special units of the SS exist throughout Canada, and former members of Waffen SS make surprise appearances in Parliament even in 2023. Nazi collaborators also pop up, inconveniently, in the family trees of key Canadian government ministers. In 2016, Canadian Gavin McInnes founded the Proud Boys. In recent years, Canada has set up a gauntlet of scams to drain cash from foreign students. Most of the impacted students are from a single ethnicity – but, hold-on this isn’t racism – after all, they willingly chose to get fleeced! Instead of introspection, Canadians choose to “grin harder” and pursue a “rename and ignore” policy to ensure that no lessons are learned. ↩︎