Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story is a CBC Television miniseries first aired in two consecutive parts on March 12 and March 13, 2006. It dramatizes and fictionalizes the life and career of Tommy Douglas, the Canadian politician who oversaw the legislation of Canada's first public healthcare program as Premier of Saskatchewan. The production is directed by John N. Smith and produced by Kevin DeWalt with Mind's Eye Entertainment. Prairie Giant is distributed in the United States by Invincible Pictures.
The CBC promoted Prairie Giant as a "real story about real people" but the series was subjected to widespread commentary on the fallacies present in the story line. Historical fallacies and omissions concerning Canada's public healthcare system and its history, Douglas's personal life and career, and the mischaracterization of James Garfield Gardiner were identified.
On March 16, 2006, Saskatoon StarPhoenix political columnist Randy Burton wrote, "It was wonderful television but abysmal history.... On almost every score, scriptwriter Bruce Smith got Gardiner wrong."[1]
On March 17, 2006, Regina Leader-Post political columnist Murray Mandryk stated, "a project like this has to be some level of historical accuracy and it is in the script itself where the movie fails. The most egregious example of this was clearly the Estevan riot ... Gardiner was not the premier of the day and he didn't give a province-wide radio address attacking the strikers as communists and undesirable immigrants." Mandryk stated that former NDP Premier Allan Blakeney stated "he was not Saint Tommy and nor was Jimmy Gardiner the epitome of evil."[2]
On July 9, 2006, former Co-operative Commonwealth Federation MP and well-known journalist Douglas Fisher described the film as "A Shoddy Portrait of another Prairie Giant."[3]
On June 12, 2006, CBC Executive Vice-President Richard Stursberg, stated, "I regret the mischaracterization of James Garfield Gardiner in the mini-series 'Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story' that we aired". He further stated, "To help us address the criticisms, we engaged an outside third-party historian... to assess the way in which Mr. Gardiner was depicted. I regret to say that his conclusion was that the character created for the film does not reflect the accepted historical record". The CBC pulled Prairie Giant from future scheduled broadcasts and stated that it would return if it found a solution to address the historical fallacies.[4] On 10 September 2007, it was announced that the controversial CBC miniseries would be rebroadcast with no changes on another channel, Vision TV, on September 25 and 27.[5]
Attention has also been drawn to the funding provided to the film by the Saskatchewan government.[6] [7]
Below is a general breakdown of the direct funding the film received:[8]
| Funding Source | Amount (CDN$) | |
|---|---|---|
| Telefilm Canada - Equity Investment Program | $2,480,000 | |
| Saskatchewan Film Employment Tax Credit[9] | $1,589,606 | |
| Canadian Television Fund - Licence Fee Top-Up Program | $1,520,000 | |
| CBC - Broadcast licence | $1,204,500 | |
| Government of Saskatchewan - Saskatchewan Centennial 2005 | $614,000 | |
| Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit[10] | $471,494 | |
| CanWest Western Independent Producers Fund | $110,000 |
Prairie Giant was nominated for a total of nine Genie Awards, including:
As of 2017 the miniseries was released online on the Canada Media Fund Encore+ YouTube channel.