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Les Stroud's 'Survive This' takes kids into the wilderness and tasks them with finding their inner 'Survivorman'
When Les Stroud announced his retirement from "Survivorman" last year, wilderness-TV fans shed some tears, but we all hoped he'd be back. We're happy to report the time has come: Les Stroud returns to Canadian TV this week with "Survive This," in which eight teenagers with varying levels of outdoor skill are thrust into the Northern Ontario woods to survive with no tools outside of their clothes.I think that trying to break down the wall between the concrete jungle and the forest jungle would be one of the things I’d like the kids to get out of this and everyone doing it to get out of it, as I did with my own show. You don’t have to be some kind of survival guru to do this kind of stuff. You can just be a regular person. And you can get through this. And if you can break yourself down and survive at the basic level with food, water and shelter, it’s a metaphor for life.Stroud says the kids were kept safe, but otherwise left to their own devices when it came to survival, and while he offered some support, he wasn't about to be "holding their hands, not me being Uncle Les. I’ll just issue the challenge and they have to go through what I go through." He selected Northern Ontario (the site of the first "Survivorman" episode) as a survival zone because of its particularly brutal conditions:
Northern Ontario is hard survival. If you look at the Montagnais in Northern Quebec, which (has a) similar forest -- it’s a boreal forest -- they have no artwork. All cultures have art. Why don’t these people have art? Because they’re too busy surviving. If there’s no art, you can bet the whole time is spent hunting down some rat to eat.There's no word yet on American television picking up the show, but surly teens + Les Stroud + brutal woods + rat eating sounds like a winning combination to us—we'll keep you posted.

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READERS COMMENTS
i am a big fan of the wild i love being out doors, i love nature, and i know i cud survive out side days at a time, camping was always my number 1 thing 2 do when summer came around, id even do it in the winter, but parents don't think so. it wud be a dream come true to be on survive this.
Posted: May 15, 2009 joel
Ive been lost before and you dont always think straight out there until you remember one of Les's shows.Come back to the US Les...
Posted: May 06, 2009 Frank Harp
Ok, we have to have this on tv in America. Not sure how long we can go without Les on tv here. Bring him to us too please.
Posted: Apr 11, 2009 Debbie
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