The Adventures of Timothy Pilgrim

The Adventures of Timothy Pilgrim was a children’s television serial consisting of ten 15 minute installments which originally aired in 1975 on Canada’s TVOntario and was rerun countless times afterward over the next decade on TVO as well as on other Canadian educational channels and PBS.

The title character is a shoeshine boy who travels back 100 years in time by means of a magic trunk and meets Zachariah Gibson, a travelling salesman and showman who peddles elixers and tonics. Episodes are based on the pair’s travels between the worlds of the 1870s and 1970s.

Both characters face challenges in their respective times - Timothy is an orphan who squats in an abandoned warehouse and makes a living shining shoes and doing odd jobs at a neighbourhood diner owned by Wilma. He is bullied by the neighbourhood thug, Barney, who demands $5 from Timothy for the right to work on “his” corner. owned by his friend Wilma and is also friends with Ol’ Coop, a cobbler.

Zachariah Gibson is a travelling salesman who sells medicinal cure-all elixirs of dubious quality out of his wagon. However, he is stuck on the land of a hostile propety owner as a wagon wheel needs repairing and his horse has either run off or been stolen. Zachariah feels that people don’t like him and that he cannot trust anyone.