When Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison (Being Caribou), along with their 2-year old son, Zev, and indomitable dog Willow set out to trace the footsteps of one of Canada's most famous writers, Farley Mowat, they mean it literally.
Their 5000-kilometre trip – trekking, sailing, portaging and paddling from the prairies to the Maritimes – is captured in this feature-length documentary Finding Farley.
They paddle east from Calgary, towards the prairies (the geography of Born Naked and Owls in the Family) and then traverse the same paths that Farley took more than 60 years earlier, which became the foundation for Never Cry Wolf, and People of the Deer. The travelers also get an earful about the long-standing controversy that attends Farley's work.
When the family reaches their final destination, Mowat's Nova Scotian summer home, it is, as Karsten says, “An affirmation of what the land and animals had already told us…Stories aren't so much written or created as they are released, expressing what's been there all along.”
Also of interest:
The New North with Farley Mowat (NFB, 1987)
Watch Bill Mason's Path of the Paddle: Solo Basics (NFB, 1977)
Watch Bill Mason's Path of the Paddle: Doubles Whitewater (NFB, 1977)
Watch Bill Mason's Path of the Paddle: Doubles Basics (NFB, 1977)
