Growing Up Canadian: Health
2003 · 45m · Canada
Directed by Susan Terrill
Genres: documentary, essay film, historical
Tones: contemplative, tender
School nurses, lice inspections, nose-blowing drills, open-air schools, travelling dentists, epidemics, and quarantines mark a century of children's health in Canada. Recollections trace how public health care reshaped childhood.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A century of Canadian public health policy told through nostalgia and bureaucratic memory—competent archival work, sure, but it's playing it safe, genuinely afraid to ask *why* we've mythologized this stuff or what we've lost in the process.
Terrill situates childhood health within a clear historical lineage, using recollection and artifact to trace how institutional care redefined a generation; the essay form here is rigorous, building toward something that feels both intimate and culturally significant.
The decision to anchor this through personal recollection rather than expert testimony gives the archive unexpected warmth, though the 45-minute length sometimes dilutes what could've been sharper if Terrill had trusted the visual gaps more.