Canada over the Edge with Graham Beard (Clip 1)
Credit: Killawee, A. (2011). Vancouver Island Eastern Coastline [Canada over the Edge series, Season 2, Episode 2]. Canada: Arcadia Entertainment Inc.
Transcript:
[Drone footage over the Qualicum area’s coastline at low tide. Orchestral music is playing in the background.]
Narrator: From Qualicum Beach, to Hornby Island… The region is quickly becoming known as one of the world’s great undiscovered fossil beds.
[Orchestal music is replaced by the sound of crashing waves. Camera pans up to see Graham Beard walking along the edge of a stony beach.]
Graham Beard: Right now I’m standing on what is known as Qualicum Beach. Qualicum Beach is located about mid-island on the east coast of Vancouver Island. This is… Fossil collector’s paradise.
[Close-up of Graham Beard talking, with the beach behind him.]
GB: Geologists have been exploring Vancouver Island for… More than a hundred years. But… The geologists in the past have been mainly interested in the economic resources, and the paleontology was virtually unexplored.
[Orchestral music resumes. Aerial footage over a layered rock formation extending into the ocean begins.]
GB: As a result, when a group of amateur paleontology society sprung up here on the island, amateurs were finding all kinds of incredible fossils. As a result of that, the professional paleontologists began to realize what a treasure trove we have here on the island.
[Music continues as the footage pans out over the ocean.]
[Camera comes into focus on Graham Beard’s hand holding a dark brown ammonite.]
GB: Hornby Island is famous for its ammonites, and there’s a great variety of them.
[Close-up on Graham Beard’s face as he talks.]
GB: The ammonites that we find on Hornby Island are from what’s called the Upper Cretaceous time; that’s when the dinosaurs were just about to become extinct near the end of the Cretaceous… What’s called the Cretaceous time, and these shelled animals called the ammonites also become extinct about the same time.
[A panning shot of the Vancouver Island coast changes quickly to Graham Beard again walking along a stony beach.]
GB: I first learned about the fossils of Vancouver Island when I was at UBC, studying paleontology. I started to build up a large collection of fossils from this area.