Winter (E04)

Winter weather creates severe conditions across the country, including one of Canada’s most remote and far-flung islands — a crescent-shaped sliver of land 300 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia: Sable Island. Here 400,000 grey seals have come ashore to give birth and mate. The tiny seal pups are born into a world of howling, gale-force winds, blowing sand, and blizzards. Living alongside them are the remarkable wild horses of Sable Island. Although harsh, winter is also a beautiful season. In the Arctic, the sun sets and will not rise again for months, and the spectacular purple and green dance of the aurora borealis fills the night skies. Finding food is a challenge at this time of year. In central Saskatchewan, sleek river otters punch through the ice to go hunting in the icy depths; in northern Quebec, barren ground caribou dig through a metres-thick blanket of snow to uncover tiny bits of a dry lichen, and on Prince Edward Island, a red fox relies on her keen sense of hearing to pinpoint the exact location of mice and voles moving beneath the snow and then dive after them nose-first. While snow does make life harder for some it provides surprising protection for others. Meadow voles live in tunnels they burrow under the snow to escape the cold, and the attention of aerial hunters like grey owls. But there are slender hunters like the short-tailed weasel that can still hunt them through the tunnels of this subnivean world. (CBC Television)