On a hot summer day, an abandoned fawn appeared at the rural home of couple living in Quebec's Eastern Townships. They took the young deer into their care and named him Hoppy.  Their lives were turned upside-down as Hoppy spent the next two years living with them, but it couldn't last forever.

The adoptive parents faced the challenge of finding a long-term home for the playful, but wild animal. Hoppy is the story of a remarkably close encounter between man and animal, with an ending determined by Hoppy, not the humans.

Hoppy was produced and directed by Tony Girardin of Drummondville, Que.


About ten years ago, bald eagles in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley discovered that many of the valley's large commercial chicken farmers were disposing of a few dead chicks each day by depositing them out in their fields. Each farmer has a natural mortality of one or two percent among the chickens, and with millions of chickens being raised in the area the bald eagles were quick to catch on.

This bonanza of extra winter food began attracting hundreds of eagles that would normally spend their winters foraging along the Atlantic coast. The eagles began a daily circuit of the chicken farms, competing with each other for the new and easy source of food. Soon the word spread among birders, who came by the carload on weekends to witness the eagles.

Before long, local people organized Eagle Weekend, an annual event in late January that has attracted thousands of people eager to watch eagles at close range. Now between 400 and 600 eagles are counted here each winter, and a few have stayed to nest.