I saw this film the first time in the early 70’s. Old Canada was disappearing, and you could still see shards of it back then. It was a big place, still, and my world was still so small. I might have been a traveller, had the cards of my life fallen differently.
This is a story from my childhood.
Do the kids even have stories any more? The stories of my age were meant to provoke thought in young ones. What lies over the horizon? Could I carve like that little Indian kid? What would it be like to live in a place where the water goes out to the horizon?
We don’t encourage our kids to think anymore.
Glen, I do not know that I can fully answer your comment, but I think the stories are different now. Exploration and adventure have in a lot of ways perished from the scene - at least in my perception anyway. Maybe looking to Mars is the new exploration story.
ReplyDeletePossibly.
DeleteBut even that... I look at all these kids holed up in mom's basement playing video games... and all the snowflakes and kidults... and darn it - we broke something in our kids somewhere...
Glen, I think we were too intent on giving our children the material things we never had. Somewhere in that, we lost touch with the simpler, spiritual things that makes a child wonder and explore. We had the best intentions. We just missed some details along the way. And maybe the kids just got lazy.....
DeleteFrom 1959 - '62 there was a TV show called Adventures in Paradise, which featured a massive schooner and a cast that included some real native hotties. I was able to watch a few episodes, but my father generally forbade it. The show gave me ideas that were not in keeping with working the life out of me on a horse farm, you see. All that sailing meant that a man could pretty much go anywhere he wanted. All you needed was wind.
ReplyDeleteHindsight is always 20/20, or like someone once said, "shoulda, woulda, coulda", but in this case I should have pursued my own interests a lot harder than I did.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_Paradise_(TV_series))
As much as I miss the old USA, I miss the old Canada. God help us all.
ReplyDeleteWe are so fucked, Quartermain. This will not end well for any of us.
DeleteThanks for this. I'm your age and grew up on a small horse farm outside of a small town by Lake Huron. We'd be considered poor today I suppose. Every Saturday my mother would gather the four of us kids up and drop off at the library while she and my father went to the track to train their horses. The librarian was older and would show films in the basement on an old strip projector. BBC, CBC and the National Film Board for an hour. Then we'd go upstairs and look through the books and read. I remember this very film. Long time ago now.
ReplyDeleteI saw it Doug - and it just tugged on the ol' heart strings. The libraries used to be a great way to kill time...
ReplyDeleteI saw this in Texas when I was a wee lad. I got the Qualified Projectionist pin from Bell and Howell working on films like this. Teachers couldn't quite get stuff working, and I had the knack. My memories added the sound of the 16mm projector...
ReplyDeleteHolling Clancy Holling was my favorite writer/illustrator when I was a kid.
ReplyDeletePaddle-to-the-Sea
Pagoo (about a hermit crab)
Minn of the Mississippi (about an alligator snapping turtle)
Seabird (a carved arctic gull)
The Cowboys (two NYC kids go to visit their western uncle)
The Indians (a look at 4 tribes of Native Americans)
Tree in the Trail (about a cottonwood tree)
All are friggin classics and should be in every child's room.
Beautiful illustrations. The science and history behind the works are still solid and valid. And the writing is just top notch.
Paddle-to-the-Sea introduced me to the North that I would never see, and about all the great lakes.
Yaknow? They aren't bad books for an adult to read.
For a second I thought you were going Rain Man....
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