2003 - 2004 Season
Wednesday March 31
DEAD IN THE WATER: There's a problem with the world's water supply. One in four people on earth doesn't have access to clean drinking water. Water and sanitation infrastructures are crumbling. We keep using more of it, yet continue to degrade and deplete it. Powerful companies spotted a crisis and saw a business opportunity. From Moncton, New Brunswick to Atlanta, Georgia and Buenos Aires, Argentina to Soweto, South Africa, the fifth estate's Linden MacIntyre investigates the results of the effort to privatize what many consider a public trust.
Visit the Web Feature
Wednesday March 17:
WHOSE LIFE IS IT, ANYWAY? When does a national pastime become a destructive personal obsession? Just ask Patrick O'Sullivan. The 19 year-old centre for the OHL's Mississauga IceDogs was considered a sure thing for the first round of the 2003 NHL draft in Nashville. But, the brilliance of his play as a junior hockey player has been tarnished by the reputation of his father, John, as an obsessive, even abusive, hockey father. Bob McKeown talks to Patrick, his mother and his father as well as Don Cherry and Wayne Gretzky about hockey and the relationship between young players and their parents.
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Wednesday March 10:
NO WAY HOME: They beg in the streets and bed down under bridges. Over the past two decades, in Toronto alone, the number of emergency beds for homeless-often-abused-kids has gone up 450 per cent. Shelters and services for the homeless are now costing Canadians a billion dollars a year. Hana Gartner traces the journey of three kids who ran to the streets at age 13. Through the eyes of their street mom "Angel," and the unusual shelter she operates,
No Way Home offers a rare glimpse into a parallel society populated by lost children on the run.
Web Exclusive: the fifth estate has compiled a statistical look at the homeless problem in Toronto and Canada. Find out more about who the homeless are, how they live and make money. Read more about why youth people leave home and what it is costing them and society as a whole.
More
Wednesday, March 3
TALKING AT CANADIANS: The relationship between Canada and the United States is one of the most envied in the world, but it has not been without its moments of tension. The tone is often set by Washington's man in Ottawa, the ambassador. Currently, that's Paul Cellucci, a former governor of Massachusetts who, in the last year has chastized the Canadian government frequently on a range of issues, perhaps most importantly on Canada's refusal to take part in the Coalition of the Willing. Linden MacIntyre examines what price Canada may have to pay for going its own way.
Read more about this story...
THE TRAGICALLY SMART: What is smart? "The Tragically Smart" looks at people with exceptionally high IQ's , and finds that although they are brimming with intelligence, they may not be what we expect.
More on this story...
Wednesday February 25
AFTER THE CAMERAS WENT AWAY
What happens to the people we meet in the course of producing our stories
after the television cameras go away? Last season,
the fifth estate re-visited just a few to see how their lives have changed since we last saw them. The result was so interesting and so popular that we're doing it again this year. Linden MacIntyre returns to Saskatchewan to talk to the central figure in our story
The Scandal of the Century. In 1985, Hana Gartner met a fourteen year old whiz kid who said he wanted to win a Nobel Prize. Find out what he's doing now. And Bob McKeown re-introduces us to a young woman, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, whose life has taken an amazing turn. (see
Holly's story)
Visit the updated Scandal of the Century web feature.
Wednesday February 11 & 18 (Two-Part Special)
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE
For thousands of young Hondurans, the only hope of finding a way out of the grinding poverty of their existence is to hop a train headed for el norte - the north; either the United States or Canada. They'll risk their lives on a dangerous and illegal 5000 kilometre journey. The fifth estate's Bob McKeown follows the perilous journey of a group of young men as they embark on a desperate race for el norte.
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Wednesday February 4
THE EDUCATION OF SHANNON
For years the community of Shannon, just outside Quebec City, has been using a water supply seriously contaminated by a chemical called TCE. The TCE seeped into Shannon's water system from the neighbouring Valcartier military base, owned by the Department of National Defence, and residents believe the number of cancers that have shown up in the town is the result. Now Shannon is fighting to find out who knew about this contamination and for how long. Was there an effort by some government departments to keep this contamination secret? And are there other cases, just like Shannon, at hundreds of other government-owned sites across the country?
More about this story.
Wednesday January 28
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
the fifth estate's Bob McKeown finds that even the most outlandish conspiracy theory may have its basis in a legitimate question. In the course of separating fact from fiction, Bob delves into the labyrinthine and surprising ties between the Bushes and the Bin Ladens. What he finds out may startle you as much as any conspiracy theory.
Visit the web feature
Wednesday January 21
A BABY TO SAVE OUR SON
A Baby To Save Our Son tells the story of a British couple, Jayson and Michelle Whitaker, and their seriously ill son, Charlie. Their only hope of finding a cure for Charlie and saving his life is to use a controversial gene technology--produce a baby that is a perfect genetic match for Charlie and harvest stem cells from the baby's umbilical cord. We follow the Whitaker's two-year journey through a minefield of emotions and ethical issues, from one continent to another, as they prepare to create one baby to save another child.
More
Wednesday, January 14
DEATH OF A BEAUTY QUEEN
An unsolved forty year-old murder remains vividly alive in the memories of a Saskatchewan community with help from one of Canada's foremost novelists. Linden MacIntyre investigates the murder of The Girl from Saskatoon.
Read a timeline about the case.
Wednesday, December 3
BEAR HUG
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the way seemed clear for a new Russia - at once democratic and capitalist. But the road since then has been rough. In the early 1990's, as the country drifted in and out of chaos, President Boris Yeltsin handed over key elements of the economy to a handful of emerging entrepreneurs, who would become known as the 'oligarchs', from the Greek for 'rule by a few'. Host Bob McKeown tells the story of one of them and what happened when a thriving Canadian oil company fell afoul of him and the Russian legal system.
See a list of links for this story
Wednesday, November 19
DEATHROW.COM
More about this story.
Wednesday, November 12
LITTLE HELPERS
You may take them, and if not, then you certainly do know someone who does. "They" are anti-depressants, and not that long ago they were a novelty. But, as we've used them to treat everything from jangled nerves to far more severe problems, they've largely come to be taken for granted--and "take" them we do, in the millions: they're one of Canada's most-prescribed groups of drugs. But have we grown TOO comfortable with these powerful medications? For many, they're safe and effective medicine, for others there are nightmarish side-effects. Now, a heated debate has been inflamed by troubling reports of addiction and even violence. Our little helpers have changed modern life, but at what price?
See a list of links for this story.
Wednesday, November 5
LANDSLIDE
The largest international police investigation in history shut down a web site called Landslide Productions in Texas. Landslide provided subscribers with the names of web sites that dealt in child pornography; its owners were convicted and sent to prison. The global list of Landslide's subscribers exceeded 300,000 people and among them were more than 2,000 Canadians. But, as Linden MacIntyre reports, even with that information Canadian police are finding prosecutions here difficult to get."
Visit the web feature
Wednesday, October 29
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
In a special season premiere investigation the fifth estate's Bob McKeown finds that even the most outlandish conspiracy theory may have its basis in a legitimate question. In the course of separating fact from fiction, Bob delves into the labyrinthine and surprising ties between the Bushes and the Bin Ladens. What he finds out may startle you as much as any conspiracy theory.
Visit the web feature
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