Wow, it's been one year already since I started this blog and I've barely posted a thing! Well I will try and make it up this year, starting with a story about growing up...

One of the most memorable things about growing up in Canada was the fact that every summer my father would take a month off of work and pack our entire family and dog into our car and take us camping. Each year we would travel somewhere different and by the time I was in my early teens we had managed to see most of Canada. These excursions helped to shape my love of nature and the joy of sleeping under a starry sky, something which unfortunately I do not get to do so often anymore.

Usually we would camp in the various National or Provincial Parks scattered around the country, and almost every park would have an outdoor auditorium where each evening a Park Ranger would either give a talk or show a short film. These films were always educational, usually had an environmental twist and were more often than not made by local Canadian filmmakers. Some of the best short films shown at the events were made by an avid canoeist and filmmaker called Bill Mason. Bill was a talented filmmaker who would use his films as a way of allowing himself more time in the wilderness to go canoeing. Almost all of his films have become classics such as Waterwalker, Paddle to the Sea or the Path of the Paddle series on how to canoe.

But the Bill Mason film which I remember most was The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes (1968), a documentary film that not only charted the evolution of the Great Lakes from past to present but was also a comment on the environmental damage being done by man. But I think what gave the film so much impact for a young boy was the fact that it was done very tongue in cheek. A dry and boring documentary it was not, the entire film is done through the eyes of one man who somehow manages to unwittingly canoe through time and is exposed to the changes happening around him. One moment he is sitting in his canoe, dipping his mug into the lakes to sip the clear water, only to see the water turn polluted unbeknownst to our poor canoeist., 

All that to say that I would love to find a copy of this rather obscure film to show my kids, but until I do, will have to make do with a short YouTube clip where the poster bemoans his inability to find the film too.