Wild Canada

: Canada has some

of the most remarkable wilderness

found anywhere in the world...

And some of the planet's most iconic wildlife.

It has the longest coastline of any country in the world.

It has more surface freshwater

than any other nation on earth...

And the largest intact forest left on the planet.

And yet much of this great wilderness

and the wildlife found here today

is a result of shaping by humans

over thousands of years.

Canada is a land filled

with astounding wilderness and wildlife.

And this series will explore

this incredible natural diversity

and the forces that produced it.

15,000 years ago, Canada was buried

under a kilometres-thick, continent-wide glacier.

This is when the story

of Canada's modern wildlife and landscapes

actually begins.

As sea levels lowered,

a land bridge with Asia was created,

along which new life entered north America.

And for the first time,

humans arrived in this new world.

Right from the start,

they began to change the land and wildlife around them...

And nothing would ever be the same again.

But 15,000 years later,

Canada is considered one of the wildest countries

in the world.

And one of its greatest natural spectacles

takes place each year on its Atlantic coast.

This is the province of newfoundland,

and it's as far east as you can go

on the north American continent.

For thousands of years,

this place has drawn travellers to its shores.

Humpback whales arrive here each spring

from as far away as the Caribbean.

They're drawn by the abundance of this place.

It's a richness that comes from the sea.

Over the years,

this richness drew many different types of visitors.

In 1497, John Cabot arrived

and became the first European since the vikings

to lay claim to this new-found land.

Cabot was looking for a new trade route to China,

but instead stumbled upon

the unimaginably rich natural resources of Canada.

Here on the east coast,

that wealth begins under the sea.

Capelin.

Huge shoals of these small fish, numbering in the billions,

mass along the coast of newfoundland

each spring.

These nutrient-rich fish

support the incredible abundance of life here.

The Atlantic cod were once here in numbers so great

that boats occasionally had a hard time

getting through their shoals.

Such rich fishing grounds

lured the first Europeans to these shores.

Today, the great schools of cod are mostly gone.

But that doesn't mean the capelin here are safe.

These productive seas attract

the largest gathering of humpback whales in the world.

These massive predators

have travelled thousands of kilometres

to be here at this time of year to feast on capelin.

They haven't fed for months, and they're hungry.

They can eat up to a ton of capelin

in a single day.

In one massive gulp,

these whales can take in 50,000 litres of water...

And capelin.

The capelin aren't just hanging around the coast

to feed the whales.

They are here for a reason...

to breed.

These capelin are beach spawners,

so to reproduce, they have to get to shore.

And there is only one way to get there...

They have to surf.

Most of the time,

it's truly hard to appreciate the abundance of the sea,

as it's often out of sight, hidden beneath the surface.

But when the capelin spawn in newfoundland,

the incredible productivity of this place

literally washes up onto shore...

And this puts them in easy reach

of a whole new set of predators.

Somehow in this crazy tumult

of water, sand, and tumbling bodies,

each capelin has to find a partner.

Then, in the dozen seconds that it takes

for the wave to slide back over the sand

into the sea,

they have the perfect conditions for mating.

The female lays her eggs

while competing males flank her,

jostling for position to fertilize them.

The capelin have made it

past the cod, the whales, and the gulls

to produce the next generation.

This incredible spectacle here on Canada's east coast

is a testament to another time,

one that drew the first Europeans

to these shores.

And to th ese early visitors, like Cabot,

this was a new frontier, waiting to be exploited.

It didn't take them long to realize

that there were already people here.

John Cabot was one of the first

to encounter a people called the Beothuk,

the native inhabitants of newfoundland and labrador.

To celebrate their tribal identity,

they completely covered

their bodies, clothing, and weapons

with red ochre.

This led to the name "red Indians" being applied

to many of the native peoples of the continent.

This was a meeting of two very different worlds.

But the Beothuk didn't want to have anything to do

with these new arrivals.

Cabot and the other early explorers

quickly came to realize

that this new world was already home to many people.

But what they could never have imagined

was that the seemingly pristine, wild landscapes they found here

had been shaped by the first nations inhabitants

over thousands of years.

At the time of Cabot's arrival,

the iroquoian and algonquian people of the eastern forests

had created a rich, lush homeland.

In 1679, one European visitor

described these eastern oak forests

as full of "vast meadows, vineyards,

"trees bearing good fruit,

"groves and forests...

"so well disposed

one would think nature alone could not have made it."

And that turned out to be very true indeed.

It was a fertile patchwork of oak forests and grasslands,

a savannah-like habitat where wildlife thrived.

When Cabot arrived,

this continent supported huge populations of wild deer,

millions more than it does today.

Over thousands of years,

the people here had engineered their very own garden of eden

through the careful use of fire.

But we are only just beginning to realize the massive extent

to which they had shaped the country around them.

The first human inhabitants of north America

weren't shaping the landscape with fire

on just a small and local scale.

They were burning tens of millions of hectares

each year.

Fire would burn away the young trees,

creating large grassy openings in the forest...

And clearing the way for the larger trees,

protected by their thick bark,

to grow even bigger and produce more nuts and fruit.

With controlled burns,

these people created

one of the most productive landscapes

on the continent.

But it didn't last.

Although today,

modern forest managers are rediscovering

the positive effects of fire,

centuries ago,

the practice of burning these forests ended...

And the rich, open savannah habitat

of the oak forests

was lost.

Now, after 300 years,

fire is once again shaping

the remaining black oak forests of eastern Canada.

But only a few tiny patches remain...

Protected in places like high park in Toronto,

that was built over the top of this once extensive habitat.

Without the practice of burning,

the remaining hardwood forests of Canada

look very different

from those that stood in Cabot's time.

While not as rich and varied, they are much more colorful

because of the abundance of maple trees

in the forest today.

Maple are very sensitive to fire,

so they were kept back by the burning of the forest.

But when the burning stopped,

maple trees started to take over.

One of Canada's most famous natural displays

is a relatively recent creation

arising from our new relationship

with forests.

In winter, the maple's broad leaves