Got any secrets in your family tree, skeletons in ye olde ancestral closet? Were your ancestors sinners or saints, royals or rogues? Now you can dig into your family history with “Ancestors in the Attic” presented by Reader’s Digest Canada, airing Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT beginning October 18, 2006 on History Television.

Produced by Toronto’s Primitive Entertainment and hosted by Things That Move’s Jeff Douglas, “Ancestors in the Attic” is an irreverent, fast-paced new series that takes viewers on a road trip across Canada and on a worldwide search for their ancestors. Part personal drama, part forensic investigation and part historical revelation, “Ancestors in the Attic” reveals to Canadians, in an intimate and dramatic way, not only their roots, but also the diverse stories that make up the history of our country.

Ancestors in the Attic” presented by Reader’s Digest Canada was based on an idea by Dugald Maudsley and his father, Don Maudsley, who has a keen interest in family history. “I challenged my dad to come up with a great story to prove that genealogy was ready for prime time,” says Maudsley, who is also a producer and writer of the project. “He came up with two from our own family - one about a murder-suicide and the other about an unusual piece of land. That was pretty dramatic material, and History Television thought so, too.”

 For more than a year, “Ancestors in the Attic” has gathered unsolved family mysteries submitted by Canadians and, over 15 half hour programs, the program’s team of professional Indiana Jones genealogists will crack them. The results are often unexpected; the revelations startling.

 Host Jeff Douglas and staff genealogist Paul McGrath travel the world pursuing family legends, tracking the genealogy of families, reuniting lost kin, and revealing simple ways to break through genealogical brick walls. At the same time a panel of professional genealogists – Dr. Kevin James, Fawne Stratford-Devai, and Ryan Taylor – combine their considerable talents to take viewers on a forensic journey that unlocks the answer to a particularly difficult mystery – the true identity of a murder victim, the final resting place of a war hero, the location of an ancestor’s antebellum plantation.

The stories of “Ancestors in the Attic” cover the entire breadth of Canada from Coquitlam, B.C., to Carbonnear, Newfoundland, and from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories to Chatham in southwestern Ontario. The series also crosses oceans to actively help people uncover the secrets in their family tree.  By telling the story of one person’s search for their ancestors “Ancestors in the Attic” not only delves into a slice of Canadian history, it reveals the connections that bind us as individuals, families and as a nation.

“Ancestors in the Attic” presented by Reader’s Digest Canada is produced by Primitive Entertainment in association with History Television, produced with the assistance of the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit. The series is produced by Dugald Maudsley, Kristina McLaughlin and Michael McMahon, and executive produced by Michael McMahon. Executive for History Television is Michael Kot.

 About Primitive Entertainment

 Primitive Entertainment is a leading Canadian production company based in Toronto and specializing in high-quality non-fiction films. The company was founded in 1990 by brothers Kevin and Michael McMahon, with Kristina McLaughlin joining the company in 1994. Primitive Entertainment’s impressive roster of award-winning work includes: The Falls; McLuhan’s Wake; Stolen Spirits of Haida Gwaii; The Trouble with Boys; Cod: The Fish That Changed the World; I, Curmudgeon; and the series Things That Move. In addition to Ancestors in the Attic, Primitive is currently producing Four Wings and a Prayer, a high-definition feature-length international co-production with Films à Trois, Paris and the National Film Board for the Documentary Channel and France 2; the second and third seasons of Things That Move, hosted by Jeff Douglas for History Television; a feature-length documentary by Alan Zweig entitled Lovable, for TVOntario and IFC; and Kevin McMahon’s feature-length documentary, Waterlife. More information is available at: www.primitive.net