A tv show has recently come to mind as I’ve started working on my board game. It’s called Pioneer Quest: A Year in the Real West. I remember watching this show when it first aired in 2000-2001 on the History Channel.

While it has been some time since I watched the series I remember one scene in particular. During the winter Frank decided to start making his wife, Alana, some moccasins as cabin fever was hitting him hard.

Pioneer Quest: A Year in the Real West is the documentary history of two modern couples, Tim and Deanna and Frank and Alana, who spent a year authentically experiencing a Manitoba pioneer homesteader’s way of life. Unless the producers had a time machine capable of transporting the modern pioneers back to Manitoba in the 1870s, it is quite inconceivable that a more realistic portrayal of homesteading life in Canada’s western prairies could have been created.

Stewart, Ian. (2002). Pioneer Quest: A Year in the Real West. CM Magazine. 8(20).

I think I will purchase a copy of the DVDs which run $120 on the Treadway’s website.

There are several other shows created in the same respect as Pioneer Quest done by the same producer, Jamie Brown. There is Quest for the Bay (2002) which follows a group of 8 who attempt to travel by York boat from Winnipeg to an old trading post in Hudson Bay, Klondike: The Quest for Gold (2003) which follows a group of five who retrace the historic route taken during the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush, and Quest for the Sea (2004) which follows 2 families as they return to the way of life, circa 1937, in a remote fishing village in Newfoundland.

Quest for the Bay (2002)

Klondike: The Quest for Gold (2003)

Quest for the Sea (2004)

On a more comedic note it also reminds me of a Simpsons (Helter Shelter – S14E05) episode where they participate in a reality tv show where they return to living as if it were 1895.