Program Category: Lifestyle

Like many small towns across Canada, Craik Saskatchewan was facing a slow extinction and the future looked bleak. Then they decided to try something really out there. They subdivided an area outside of town and sold the lots for $1 each. There was a catch. You have to build and live there, off the grid. Only green, sustainable housing is allowed, and no power.

Eco-Home Adventures follows the lives of these re-pioneers for over a year as they strive to build something unique, a model community to show that a sustainable village off the grid is possible.

Winners$ showcases business leaders as they explain the secrets to their success. Each episode covers a different theme, from property investment and franchisees, to technology.

Typically cuisine is not the first thing to come to mind when people think of Syria, Afghanistan, or Tibet. In Refugee Chef, each episode features real-life people who have escaped wars and civil strife, and survived impossible odds to make their own tale of rags to riches come true. Behind each dish are stories of survival as refugees seek freedom from society in conflict. The culinary diaspora of these countries are slowly changing perceptions by using food in a powerful way. We will see how they struggle to make new lives with their family recipes and how cities have been enriched by their presence.

You never really know what it’s like to live in another country with a different culture and possibly a different language until you live like locals. For one year, Aussie pet and house sitters Gai and Neil care for everything from a cute stone cottage in the south of France to a magnificent French Chateau. From historic stately mansions in rural England to a grand mountain top villa in Central Italy and everything in between. From a Village to a Villa, their precious pets all need love and attention while their owners are away.

Season 2 finds Charlie Norman and his crew of world-class craftsmen traveling deeper into the hills and hollers of Appalachia in their quest to find long-lost cabins and barns to save.  Armed with plenty of historic-wood, know-how and blended with a little mountain man construction magic, what’s old becomes amazingly new again as these centuries-old structures are carefully disassembled and restored.  For Charlie Norman and his crew, their work represents nothing less than the restoration of the American dream.

The series celebrates the final re-opening of the entire Royal Canal to navigation after more than half a century of derelic- tion. Dick Warner makes his return on a barge called the ‘Rambler’, an original 70ft Royal Canal Tug Barge built in 1878. On his journey, Dick meets both experts and ordinary people who live along the canal banks, learning from them about its heritage, history and wildlife. However, Dick’s journey is also full of dramatic, unforeseen moments; ‘Rambler’ is large, not very maneuverable and it’s a difficult task taking her down the Royal Canal.

With the fierce heat of the summer sun a quickly fading memory, Trish Deseine follows her series ‘Trish’s Mediterranean Kitchen with a look at the riches of Autumn in this new series ‘Trish’s Country Kitchen’.

She stays firmly in the south of her adopted country, to bring us more of the food and drink that distinguishes the Provencal region. It is a season for foraging and collecting and it’s all there for the taking, chestnuts from the market in Toulon to make a creamy soup, edible flowers gathered from the Provencal woods and fish fresh from the Mediterranean, sardines, swordfish and halibut to slow roast with vanilla back in her country kitchen.