The subseries provides information on documentaries Brian McKenna worked on or produced for The Fifth Estate.
The subseries contains research materials, monographs, notes, scripts, drafts of documentaries and correspondence, court records, work copies of videos, a sound recording, and other documents.
The subseries includes the following documentaries:
Apparitions
In January 1988 McKenna travelled to Yugoslavia to investigate the claims of six peasant children that they were experiencing apparitions of the Virgin Mary every day at 6:45 pm, and the impact on their small Serbian village.
Arnold Expedition Reenactment
Belugas
This film documents attempts to save the small white whales from massive pollution of their St. Lawrence River habitat.
Bismark
Bourrassa and Lévesque
Car Rackets
This investigation into corruption and cover-up in the auto industry was produced by McKenna in his first season at The Fifth Estate.
The Cardinal
Profile of Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger as he travelled to the Thai-Cambodian border to draw attention to the terrible plight of refugees fleeing the killing fields.
CBW
Children of the Lost
The story of two Argentine doctors attempting to heal the trauma in children whose parents were killed or disappeared during the so-called dirty war.
Collaborators
With researcher and associate producer Oleh Rumak, McKenna investigated how top Slovak officials from the Nazi Collaborationist government ended up in Canada. The film, code-named Slovaks II has not been shown to the public.
A Cruel Place
The film documents the state-sponsored terrorism during the Civil War in El Salvador.
Death Squad
Death in Tripoli
Film on the violent and mysterious death of Canadian Christopher Halens, a young Southam journalist in Libya.
Empress of Ireland
Documentary on the Empress of Ireland, a Titanic -size steamship which sank in the St. Lawrence River
Fallen Star
The history of the final days of the century-old newspaper, The Montreal Star.
Gypsies (never produced)
Heroin
The Hooded Men
In 1982, when Argentina returned to democracy, McKenna took newspaper publisher Jacobo Timmerman back to the jail on the outskirts of Buenos Aires where he had been held and tortured.
Iran Drug Film
A Journey Back
Investigation on Nazi collaborators hiding in Canada, focusing on the story of New York off-Broadway producer Jack Garfein, brought back to his hometown in Slovakia for the first time and then to the Auschwitz and Birkenhau death camps to discover his past. In the film Garfein confronts the gauleiter who had killed his family.
Lévesque in New York
Quebec’s newly elected and first separatist premier’s trip to New York to try to reassure nervous investors.
McGarr
Examination of the stress that creates among police the highest rate of alcoholism, divorce and suicide of any profession, seen through the eyes of a Montréal police officer.
Making of a Saint
Marathon Man Jerome Drayton
Mirabel
The Money Pit
Investigation of attempts made to find buried treasure in the mysterious and secret man-made passages of Nova Scotia’s Oak Island
Murder of Hilda Murrer
Investigation of the murder of this eccentric English country woman whose death may have been linked to secrets surrounding the sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands war.
Noah's Ark
Astronaut James Irwin was leading an expedition of Christian fundamentalist Americans in search of the remains of Noah’s Ark at Turkey’s Mount Ararat, to prove that the Bible and Creation story are literally true.
The Old Man and the C
A profile of Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and his claims for the healing properties of Vitamin C.
Olympic Connection
In his first season at The Fifth Estate, McKenna did investigations of corruption during the construction for the 1976 Montréal
Olympic Games
Olympic Tower
Panzers on the Prairies
Story of German Army building tanks in Alberta
Papa Plouffe
A profile of a character in Roger Lemelin’s Les Plouffe series (CBC).
Peroff Mounties
Pipe Major
The Plot
Political Corruption
The Power and the Glory
Inquiry into the politics surrounding the building of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project.
Referendums
A documentary looking at referendums, including the 1948 vote that brought Newfoundland into Canadian Confederation and leading up to the 1980 referendum on Québec independence and sovereignty association and the “Yvette” women’s movement, as well as the slick methods used in California referendums.
René Lévesque
Richard Blass
In his first season at The Fifth Estate, McKenna started with a film about a mobster named Richard Blass.
Robert F. Kennedy
The Rocket at 50
In his first season at The Fifth Estate McKenna made a feature on hockey star Maurice “The Rocket” Richard as he turned 50.
Rosie Douglas
A look at mobster Rosie Douglas.
Secret Cargo
Documentary on allegations that Pakistan was attempting to smuggle and import through Canada and the United States key components for the construction of an Islamic atomic bomb.
Secret Test
Film on the CIA-sponsored brainwashing experiments in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s on unsuspecting psychiatric patients at the Royal Victoria Hospital / Allen Memorial Psychiatric Institute in Montréal.
Shooting the Messenger
Film on the torture and murder of Latin American journalists and the occasional foreign correspondent.
State of Siege
Inquiry into communist and fascist terrorism in Italy including the infamous Red Brigade.
Sunshine Soldiers
Veliotis
VIP
Who Shot JFK?
In 1978, McKenna wrote and directed the first national television documentary challenging the conclusions of the official report into the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963, Dallas and After. It was followed by three more documentaries on new evidence: In 1979, Crossfire reported the conclusion of a Congressional Committee that Kennedy was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy. The Coffin was Empty (198?) is a testimony that medical evidence was tampered with during and after the autopsy of Kennedy. McKenna produced Who Shot JFK?, a program summarizing the evidence, on the 20th anniversary of the assassination.
