For the most part, CBC’s Sunday-night favourite has been seen as a family-friendly enterprise known for its horses, wholesome humour, romance, beautiful scenery and the odd flash of gentle drama. Nevertheless, characters will inevitably go through quite a bit of life-altering tumult over 17 years, no matter how idyllic the backdrop. For Amy Fleming (Amber Marshall) and older sister Lou (Michelle Morgan), that has included everything from mourning the death of their mother and enduring youthful romantic complications as the series began through divorce, motherhood, various professional setbacks and, most dramatically, the sudden death of Amy’s husband and fan favourite Ty (Graham Wardle) in later years.
The sequence is hardly inconsequential in terms of plot. To avoid spoilers, however, we’ll just say the two are contemplating certain aspects of Amy’s future. But it’s also a nice refresher of the relationship between the Fleming sisters and the actors who play them, which was a large part of the appeal back when CBC first aired the Calgary-shot rural drama in 2007.
“The truth is, for Amber and I, luckily our relationship has flourished over the years and we get along better than ever,” says Morgan, who will be joining her castmates for a Calgary International Film Festival screening and Q&A on Sept. 28 at the Jubilee Auditorium. “With some shows, people get really sick of each other and don’t get along anymore but we have a great relationship and when we do scenes like that, it’s not super often. So we appreciate it. It’s like ‘This is nice, this is great.’ We get to do this scene as sisters. We get to be in the beautiful place by the pond. We love doing stuff like that because it’s not typical, we’re not often doing scenes like that. We were talking about it, behind the scenes, how great it was to do it.”
But the teens eventually turned to adults. There were marriages. Every couple of seasons, a new troubled teenager or pre-teen would appear to complicate life on the ranch. Eventually, a second generation of children was born. In Season 17, which debuts Oct. 1 on CBC, one of the arcs seems to be the coming-of-age of Lou’s daughter Katie, who has been played by Calgarian Baye McPherson since Season 15. While her age isn’t clearly specified, she is clearly a teen, right down to the eye-rolling exchanges she has with her uncool parents.
“Isn’t that crazy?” says Morgan, who directed two episodes of Season 17. “My daughter in the show is a bit younger but almost the same age as Amy in the first season.”
While the cast remained remarkably consistent over the years, characters came and went. The character of Georgie, played by Alisha Newton, will not be a part of Season 17. But in another reminder of the show’s longevity, the first episode will involve Mallory (Jessica Amlee), a fan favourite who began life as a meddlesome pre-teen in Season 1 and returned in Season 16 as a mother-to-be at a crossroads in her life.
Still, judging from the first episode, there will be plenty of room given to the original protagonists of the series this year. Morgan says Lou will deal with some professional calamities while revisiting some childhood trauma that unearths some family drama. As Season 17 begins, she is campaigning for another term as mayor of Hudson. Her opponent is her friend and former co-worker Rick Adderly (played by Aidan Moreno), who was introduced at the beginning of Season 14 as the chief administrative officer of Hudson. Lou feels blindsided and a little betrayed by Rick’s political ambitions and spends part of the first episode debating whether she needs to start running a negative campaign against him, something that her father suggests is necessary but her daughter is against.
As the first LGBTQ+ character in the series, Rick represents another step in the expansion of the Heartland universe. In 2019, the short-lived spinoff web series Hudson introduced a gay character, but Rick is the first for the main TV series in 17 years.
“When we did Hudson, it felt a little bit risky,” says Morgan. “It felt like we were taking a big swing or something. I was glad we were taking it, it was long overdue, but with Aidan coming on board it was more like ‘OK, come on guys, this is not a big deal. This is the right actor for the part, this is his character, he’s excellent.’ It just felt a little more natural and easy and it wasn’t a big deal. I think it probably still was a big deal for some viewers but too bad for them.”
As Grandpa Jack espouses with trademark homespun wisdom in the voice-over narration for the trailer for Season 17: “Families, they come in all shapes and sizes.” Amy is now a single mother who went through a significant period of mourning after the death of her husband. But if Season 17 will see Lou going through some tough times, Marshall says Amy’s focus this year will be on moving past tragedy after Ty’s death.
“Just having the family unit together, unified and looking to the future I think is so important,” Marshall says. “The Heartland family has seen so many ups and downs over the last few years and Amy especially with losing her husband several years ago. It was a very delicate line that we had to travel as far as paying respect to that character and also allowing her to move on and find happiness again. So I do believe this season, Amy has found happiness and she is starting to branch out and do things she hasn’t done before and maybe date a little bit and so I think, for the fans, it’s time. We’ve given it its grieving room and Amy can go explore life again a little bit.”
But for any series, there will inevitably come a time when the story ends. Neither Morgan nor Marshall thinks Season 17 will be the last, but they both say they think about how Canada’s longest-running hour-long drama will take its final bow.
“I always wonder: When this series comes to an end, how are we going to tie it with a bow?” Marshall says. “It’s something that I would hope we knew going into the last season so we could arc all of the characters and the stories so they would have that final tie-together. But, again, it’s something we don’t know. We’re renewed year by year. With a series, you have a little bit of flexibility. Each season could be a cliffhanger, but you don’t want to do that if you’re not coming back. So it’s a really fine line of storytelling.”
Heartland Season 17 debuts Oct. 1 on CBC. The Calgary International Film Festival will hold a screening of Episode 1 and a live Q&A with cast members Amber Mashall, Michelle Morgan, Shaun Johnston and Chris Potter at the Jubilee Auditorium at 7 p.m. Visit ciffcalgary.ca.
