Here we are in okanagan falls!
[cheering & applauding]
Ok falls, british columbia in the beautiful okanagan valley
In the heart of bc's wine country.
This place is wild.
I've never seen a place anywhere in the country
Quite like this.
The rock formations, the landscape,
The vineyards, the lake. You might be thinking,
Okay, well what on earth does ok falls not have?
Well, for one, falls.
[laughing]
The falls were never very big and due to dams and
Irrigation, now, they're even smaller.
Come see the beautiful falls. Where?
Ok falls. Wait, beautiful falls or okay falls?
Okay, okay, no falls.
[laughing]
Just saying, if you came here specifically for falls,
Biggest disappointment west of dildo.
[laughing]
When you grew up in a small town in newfoundland,
You see the people have a sense of humour
About hard times.
Check, check.
I turned that into a career and hit the road.
[mc] mr. Jonny harris!
Now I'm on a mission to find the funny in the places you
Least expect it, canada's struggling small towns.
Towns that are against the ropes, but hanging in there.
Still laughing in the face of adversity.
This is okanagan falls, british columbia.
♪
I had no idea there was a place like this in canada.
It's desert. Many refer to it as the
Northern tip of the sonoran desert.
I know technically it's not desert. Why?
Because such-and-such precipitation versus
Such-and-such annual evaporation loss.
And, okay, yeah, I get it, nerd.
[laughing]
But to me, that just makes it better.
That means there's a bit more life, the plants,
The fruit, the vineyards, the greenery.
To me, a wetter desert is a better desert.
[laughing]
I think you should market it as desert lush.
That's what they call me when I drink too much baja rosa.
[laughing]
♪
One once upon a time, the major industries
In okanagan falls were fruit growing,
Especially orchards and, cattle ranching.
The last few decades have seen
A dramatic decline in both.
Amidst this struggle, I met, from halls orchard,
Debby hall.
[cheering & applauding]
Debby said back in the 70s, when her father was
Running it, you know, orchards were profitable.
Dad supported a family of five off of that farm.
There was an abundance of work to do,
Constantly: Thinning, pruning, picking,
Helping dead plants, there was tractor work,
You know, mowing grass.
Economically, what happened with fruit?
The prices dropped out.
The production costs kept rising.
And what the farmer is putting in his pocket
Was getting smaller.
Production costs have increased exponentially
Since then- wages, fuel, hydro.
The money's not there.
When you're trying to make a living,
The producer is the last one to get paid.
I said that's the opposite in film and television.
[laughing]
I'll tell you how producers get paid.
I'll break it down for you.
You let me know if one of those laser sniper dots
Shows up on my forehead.
[laughing]
The dried fruit leather factory,
It started as just a little mom and pop business and...
It brought some industry to the town.
What happened to the fruit leather factory?
It got bought out by a large corporation.
So, they moved that up to kelowna.
I didn't know what fruit leather was.
In fact, I thought a town that has this much cattle
Going through, why are you making leather out of fruit?
[laughing]
Fruit leather, I like the sound of it.
Like, could you make a pair of pants
Or something like that?
Hey, is that a banana in your pants or
Are you just happy to see me?
[laughing]
In ok falls, you can say both.
[laughing]
I'm happy to see you.
But yeah, there's banana in my pants.
[laughing]
You can't help but understand why people
Have pulled out the orchards...
And pulled out the apples.
Does it turn much of a profit now?
No, you can actually call it a non-profit organization now.
[laughing] because I have a job.
My husband works.
So yeah, we all have jobs to...
You know, feed our own selves and to pay our own bills.
Her and her brother have kept the orchards alive
More out of a...
A labour of love than profit, you know.
She said today- well, I guess-
Today you could feed a family of five,
But they'd have to love apples.
[laughing]
The price that the packing house was
Paying the producer for apples,
Then, was about 30 to 32 cents a pound.
I think currently, it's about 36 to 38 cents a pound,
Is what the farmer is getting.
We're getting a dollar a pound in the apple bin.
They opened the apple bin, a small little stand.
I went in there, I thought it was very cool.
It works entirely on the honour system.
You choose your fruit or vegetable and then
Your money goes into a money box there.
So, if you don't have the right change,
You can add a note that says,
"I owe you $3 or I owe you $5," or, "I couldn't pay this time,
I'm gonna come pay next time."
They don't take that at loblaws in toronto,
Let me tell ya.
[laughing]
Doesn't matter how many cbc shows you're on.
[laughing]
Now, I had to watch my behaviour because the
Last time somebody left out apples free to take,
It was Halloween, and I ended up
Throwing toilet paper at their house.
[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
♪
The beef auctions at the stockyard may be
A little more rare these days,
But that doesn't mean they aren't also well done.
I went to southern interior stockyards,
And I spoke to tony acland.
[cheering & applauding]
Lovely, look at this place.
It's one of the oldest in the province.
-Is that right? -For livestock market.
There was a lot of ranches in the area
Back when I was a kid.
And there was, you know,
75 to a 100 people in here, every sale.
Built in 1942, it's one of the few remaining stockyards
In the province, and all of them have
Taken a hit in recent years.
Ranching is a tough business.
The price of cattle has not kept up with inflation.
However, the expenses of raising them has
Kept up with inflation.
As the ranch is diminished,
A lot of the businesses in town just, you know,
Kind of packed up and went away.
In any market, when the stock drops on you, it's tough.
When livestock drops on you, it's crushing.
[laughing]
When I was ten or twelve years old,
I had to make sure the barns were clean, feed the horses.
I was up at 5:30 in the morning,
Milking the milk cow, and...
Doing my chores, and then going to school.
Tony said he grew up a ranch kid.
Myself, I was more italian,
But I switched to thousand island.
[laughing]
I bet ranch kids don't make the same mistake
That the rest of us made growing up.
Like a lot of us, we thought when that little piggy went
To market, we thought he was going shopping.
[laughing]
I fell in love with the auctioneering.
You can hear the auctioneers pretty much
Anywhere in the town.
When he heard the auctioneers, he just loved it.
5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50.
He fell in love with it, he knew he wanted to be
An auctioneer when he was still in grade school.
Now, it didn't help in class, right,
The teacher would tell him that a right angle
Has 90 degrees.
Tony'd always want to drive it up 92, 93...
93, 93, do I have 94, 94?
Do I have 94?
And every time he drove it up over 90 degrees,
The teacher would say he was being obtuse.
[laughing]
The livestock industry might have fallen off,
But has ok falls given up?
Hell no, this is a town that has a habit of hopping back
On the horse that goes way back to the greatest canadian
Rodeo cowboy of all time, kenny mclean.
[cheering & applauding]
It was his first time competing at the
Canadian bronc riding championship, in 1959.
He won!
Now, lots of people say, "hey, it's not my first rodeo,"
But for kenny at the pro level, it was.
[laughing]
Tony told me that that kenny was the only rodeo cowboy
Ever awarded the order of canada.
And the best part of this whole hollywood wild western?
He was a member of the okanagan nation,
And that's no bull.
[cheering & applauding]
♪
To find out a little more about the okanagan nation
And how the salmon here were dammed...
But ultimately not doomed, I had a chat
With herb alex and jenna bower.
[cheering & applauding]
Jenna and herb both belong to the osoyoos indian nation,
Which is part of the okanagan nation.
Jenna told me the name of this area...
The falls is called [speaking osoyoos language]
Which means little falls.
[speaking osoyoos language]
-Woo! -Yeah?
[cheering & applauding]
[speaking osoyoos language]
What she said.
[laughing]
I practiced that, so- every syllable is a
Sound I've never made before.
[laughing]
♪
Jenna, what are we looking at here?
This is the salmon chief.
The salmon chief he took care of the vitality of the river.
This was a person of great responsibility to look for
Various environmental indicators,
And try to gauge how much salmon was gonna
Come up the river that year.
He would let the people know how many fish to catch,
How to disperse them.
It also sounds like a mix between a wildlife officer
And my ex-girlfriend when we were at the seafood buffet.
[laughing]
"don't you think you've had enough salmon for now?
There's other people here.
Maybe you should leave some for next year."
[laughing]
Ok falls was a traditional fishing site.
It had thousands of people here for about two or
Three weeks when the fishing season was on.
However, in 1915, herb told me
They built the mcintyre dam.
And this, essentially, stopped the salmon
From migrating up for nearly a century.
It was fairly abrupt, over a couple of years.
There was no fish.
Over the past 70 to 80 years, the stocks really declined.
That used to be in the, pretty much I've heard
In the millions, and then they went down to like
10,000, 20,000 a year. -Right.
And that's where the hatchery comes in.
They started a hatchery program, in 2014,
To get the numbers back up.
You might call it artificial "in-salmon-ation".
[faint laughing & groaning]
Or not, fine.
[laughing]
Herb said, you know, this program, it's working.
I feel it's very successful.
To toot my own horn, yeah, it's-
We had a great year.
So now everything gets stronger.
There's more fish for the ospreys to eat.
The whole ecosystem improves
With having that kind of baseline...
Stock in there.
And it was missing for years so, we're really happy,
And we're seeing results.
He said this year they, they...
They counted up to 300,000 salmon coming up the river.
That's the best numbers they've had since
They began counting in 1938.
[cheering & applauding]
♪
So, I knew about cattle and the orchard decline,
But I still wanted to get a bigger picture.
So I did as I always do, I jumped in my truck and
Headed over to the local astrophysical observatory.
I dished about deep space with tim robishaw.
[cheering & applauding]
Radio telescopes study stars, galaxies,
Quasars, pulsars, microwaves,
And radio light from the beginning of the universe.
The dominion radio astrophysical observatory
Opened in ok falls in 1960.
Tell me how, the story of how this, this place was chosen.
The idea was to just find a place in canada
That was completely surrounded by rocks,
Really big mountains, so that way,
Radio waves from ok falls and the nearby towns
Would just come up and over,
And they wouldn't hit the telescopes directly.
Ideally, you want to set it sort of surrounded by
Mountains in a bowl or a basin,
So any nearby communities, their radio waves will
Sort of be blocked by the mountains and won't
Interfere with the 26-metre parabolic dish.
At first, I was like, oh my god,
You put a bowl on a dish, not a dish on a bowl,
I almost died.
[laughing]
The white lake basin here just on the other side of the
Hill from ok falls turned out to be the number one place.
But it was ranch land at the time?
That's right, it was ranch land.
-Still is ranch land. -Still cattle?
Oh yeah, we don't mow the lawn, right.
We get the, we get the cows to do that for us.
-No? -Yep.
They don't want to use lawn mowers.
You don't want to use an electric one.
And a gas one, even this- the electric signal from
A spark plug can destroy their work.
So, it's better to have...
Lawn "moo-ers".
[laughing]
I had to ask tim, have you seen anything?
Has this telescope read anything that could suggest
That there's intelligent life on other planets?
Back in 2007- there's a big
64-metre dish in australia.
And it, it caught a really weird signal.
And for the next ten years,
A couple dozen more of these things we're seen.
Is somebody sending a beacon of energy?
Reasonable question.
He said he didn't think so because...
Anything that could have created...
A signal that strong would have
Obliterated the planet it came from.
So, maybe there was intelligent life, but...
[laughing]
Maybe not anymore, and maybe even not that intelligent.
[laughing]
The dominion radio astrophysical observatory
Is the only facility of its kind in canada.
And he was telling me that they have something
Called an "open skies" policy.
♪ [ambient]
All of the telescopes on site are federally funded.
And so, if there's any astrophysicist
Anywhere in the world,
Who has an idea about how they can solve some
Outstanding problem in astrophysics,
And these telescopes will help them answer it,
They submit a proposal.
It's adjudicated by a panel of astrophysicists
All over the world.
So, don't get cheeky, I know it's a radio station,
But like don't request dark side of the moon.
[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
♪
Despite the challenges in okanagan falls,
People here tend to look at the glass as being half full,
And half full of award winning wine.
I went up to see ya later ranch.
I had a chat with david saysomsack.
[cheering & applauding]
So, tell me how you got interested in wine.
I was a home wine maker for maybe 6, 7 years.
Found the program at brock university, and then...
Graduated with my degree, and then started working
In the wine industry all around the world.
That's how he got into wine.
How did he get good at wine?
Well, he put in the time, right?
Perspiration and inspiration.
And he said he, there was years where
He was making bad wine,
And then he figured it out, he got good-
Of all things, surely wine is something that
Improves with time. I find that even
From the start of the bottle to the end of one.
-[laughing] -do you know what I mean?
The first few sips, it's like, oh, that's okay.
And then by the end, you're like,
Ah, this is delicious.
[laughing]
I guess it just needed a few minutes to breathe.
[laughing]
David really knows his stuff, and the complexity of wine,
Not just winemaking, but wine tasting.
-Hold the stem like a pen. -Yeah.
Now draw little circles.
-Ah. -Right.
And then so, you give it a quick, quick smell.
So, when we take a sip, after the sip,
You got to pull air in... The wine in your mouth,
So it hits your olfactory nerves,
And you'll actually be able to taste it
Through that slurping.
So, he was telling me a bit about retro nasal olfaction.
[slurping continues]
It sounds a bit like you're trying to
Annoy somebody with a juice box.
[slurping]
[laughing]
So, merlot, you're gonna get like plums and...
Maybe some dark cherries.
But we're talking about all these flavours.
But, none of those ingredients are ever included.
-Is it all- -it's all grapes, 100%.
-All grapes? -Yeah.
In the wine, though, they're actually some of the same...
Same chemicals that are prevalent in
Those kind of fruits and aromas.
The grapes might share molecular similarities
To other foods,
So that's why people sometimes notice, oh,
A hint of black currant here or chocolate there or...
Oak, you know, that's what people always say, like,
"oh, yes, it's oaky." right?
But here not so much oaky, more ok.
[laughing]
I believe wine is an ethereal experience...
Because what you have is a full year of grape growing
That is a snapshot of that entire year.
That year will never happen again.
It will never be exactly the same.
When you taste that bottle of wine,
It's almost like a time machine.
It's taking you back and you're tasting that year.
That year is contained in the bottle-
The soil, the nutrients.
The very, very best sommeliers,
They can tell even the climate.
They'll be like, "oh, right, ah, hints of
Caramel and vanilla and...
[sniffing] oh my god, it rained all may 2-4, huh."
[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
♪
Ok falls is a funny old place where people tell you
To take a short jump off a long bridge
It's 'cause they like ya.
[laughing]
That's how I ended up down at the ok falls trestle bridge.
I had a quick chat with jan black.
[cheering & applauding]
So, tell me, what's the score here on the bridge?
-What's this tradition? -Well... Yeah...
It's sort of an iconic thing here in okanagan falls.
This trestle bridge is...
A rite of passage to jump off the bridge and
Land in the lake.
Is it cold? How's the water?
-It's mediterranean. -Yeah, right.
I bet you tell that to all the boys.
[laughing]
All right, let's do it, let's get wet.
I was going to do something impressive.
I was thinking I'll do a double reverse somersault
In pike position.
[laughing]
But then I thought, man, think about where you are.
You don't need to do a fancy dive.
Do an ok fall.
[cheering continues]
And now know when I leave, I'll bring a bit of ok falls
With me, both in my heart and in my left ear canal.
I still got some...
[laughing]
♪
Cheers.
This is such an incredible place, you know.
It's a place where you could go to
A live livestock auction.
Go jump off a bridge.
Watch salmon come up through the river.
Or relax and fine dine, even swallow your wine.
It's a treat for your mouth and your liver.
[laughing]
See a radio telescope that could give a heads up
The next time an alien calls.
Maybe they'll visit, I hope they're not pissed
If they came here specifically for falls.
[laughing]
Things are looking up here, I mean way, way up,
All the way to a great, distant star.
And just a little bit closer, look up on the hill,
It's the grapes of a great pinot noir.
[laughing]
Feel the desert sun's heat as it rises in the east,
And brings the valley here a brand new day.
And as it dips behind the mountain walls...
Here in okanagan falls,
One feels that everything is gonna be...
[audience joins in] ok.
Thanks for coming out, everybody!
You've been great!
[cheering & applauding]
Perfect! He was out of this world.
Phenomenal, he did really good.
He gave the people some information-
There were even in this room that
Some of them I don't think completely knew.
♪
You think you know your town,
But you don't know as much as you think,
And I definitely learned a lot.
♪
I'm just so glad still standing's finally found us.
[laughing] put us on the map, yay.
♪
What we love about this show is
It really does unite a community.
♪
Hey, jonny, you made some waves in ok falls.
Thanks for splashing into town.
♪