The premiere showing of OUR TOWN: BRANTFORD will be this Saturday evening at 6:30 pm on WNED Television (the Buffalo PBS station, cable 61 in Brantford).

In October 2009, 32 current residents captured some of Brantford’s foremost “points of pride” for OUR TOWN: BRANTFORD, WNED’s 14th community “video scrapbook” production.

As these volunteer videographers show through their film footage, Brantford has carefully preserved both its storied past and its natural beauty. In this city of about 90,000 people, bald eagles – as well as the historic downtown core – are making a comeback.

I joined up as one of the volunteers, hoping to highlight some of my favourite historic sites – including St. Jude’s. I shot video at a number of places, including next to the casino at “Brant’s Ford,” at the Mohawk Chapel, at the Military Museum, at Victoria Square and at the Brant County War Memorial. Andrew Dunning was kind enough to electronically send along some of his fine photos of the interior of St. Jude’s as well.

I was interviewed at the end of October and handed in all my “raw” video footage. The editors at WNED will now cut and paste the video and audio all together into a neat package – that will probably only last about 4 minutes at most. I have no control about what gets in and what gets left out at this point, and I haven’t seen the finished video as I write, but I hope St. Jude’s gets some exposure across New York State and Ontario when the program airs as it is one of the lesser known National Historic Sites.

I handed in close to 45 minutes of video and I was interviewed for over 30 minutes…. I am told that the editors have nearly 40 hours of video to boil down to a one-hour program!

Featured Topics – The Sanderson Centre for the Performing Arts, Historic Sites (my topic), Trails, Wilfrid Laurier University, the Bell Homestead, Natural Assets/Wildlife, the Dufferin Club, the Personal Computer Museum, the Mohawk Chapel, Entertainment, the Waterfront, Hidden Gardens, Urban Renewal, Glenhyrst Gardens and Art Gallery, the Train Station, Volunteers and Community Groups, the Arts Block & Stir It Up Cafe, and the Brant Theatre Production of Dracula.

For more information on the Our Town series visit: www.wned.org.