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Tributes

Bill Mason: The Waterwalker Man

The Low Down to Hull and Back News, October 31, 1985

In a booklet produced by the National Film Board entitled simply Bill Mason: His camera, the Land and its Creatures, the first couple of paragraphs pretty well tell it like it is.

"Bill Mason is a consummate filmmaker. Not only is he a respected craftsman in every facet of filmmaking, with a sure feeling for audience reaction, but he is true to himself in his selection and treatment of topics.

"He approaches filmmaking as a painter does his canvas - alone, and with conviction and vigor. He deals only with topics which he has either experienced or has thought through Bill Mason of Meech Lake, on one of his completely, and to which he is firmly expeditions into the wilderness. committed.

Bill Mason of Meech Lake, on one of his expeditions into the wilderness. Photo: GVHS-IB 02333.003

"In a craft where group activity is the norm, he works mostly alone. In all his films, he has done the directing, editing, filming (except the scenes which he appears in), scripting and research. For his last five films he also wrote and read the commentary."

Bill is considered to be somewhat of a legend in the Canadian film business, having created some of Canada's most popular short films, such as Paddle to the Sea and the Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes. His full-length feature Cry of the Wild grossed over a million dollars in its first week in New York City. At a quick count, his films have been given over seventy awards, including an Oscar nomination for Best Short Film - a 20-minute documentary about friend and colleague Blake James who flies a battered old aeroplane around, just to get away from the pressures of conformity to real life.

However, Bill Mason, the filmmaker, has decided to hang up his camera and concentrate on his painting which is extraordinary, and could well be the subject of yet another News feature. But before he takes to the brush forever, he has been instrumental in seeing that his epic canoe odyssey Waterwalker gets to the wide screen. In fact, it had its world premier last Friday and was accorded rave reviews in the daily press.

In spite of the heavy week of promotion with the media, and just after completing a television program for CBC, he was much relaxed over tea and cake in his beautiful log cabin overlooking a very dreary and fog-shrouded Meech Lake. The scene seemed fitting when this writer asked him to explain the film's most interesting title, Waterwalker.

He told me this: "I was struggling with the film for quite a few years. As I was editing I was trying to formulate the commentary for it, but I hit a blank wall. I was happy with the visual, unhappy with the commentary. I could not seem to express my deep feelings. Then one day a longstanding friend, Alan Whatmough, who was very aware of the film, asked me to lunch to try out an idea for a title.

"We had gone through hundreds of titles - wild this, wilderness that, and so on - lots of cliches! I did not want to use the word wilderness in this film. It was so overused! He said: Waterwalker! Right away I figured we had something intriguing, not cliche. It raises a lot of questions in the mind of a person seeing the word, waterwalker. What does it mean? It has connotations of the spiritual, aspects biblical, miracle, and the idea of someone paddling a canoe around. They can see the connection. I was immediately able to sit down and write the end commentary that had literally eluded me for years. It all fell into place. The spontaneity of the commentary will make the film work!

"The viewer is kept hanging through the whole film and they are wondering how the spiritual aspect fits in; but in doing the film I simply could not sermonize or lay a trip on anyone. You will not find it in the film, as explicit as I would like the message to be. After all, it is entertainment and people do not like to be preached at, but at the same time how could I make a film dealing with my deep inner feelings about the natural world out there, the world God created, without touching on the spiritual. That is where my incentive comes from, and my love of the land. By giving me that title and by resorting to the speeches of the Indian leaders of the past talking about the Creator, it gave me a chance to show my deeper feelings, but I stopped short of making the film a sermon.

"For sure, I would say that the audience will walk away saying, 'Well'? And they will take whatever they want out of it. They will know that there is a deep spiritual feeling of why I am so crazy about the outdoors. But I was not as explicit in the film as I can be in an interview such as this. We don't have to sell tickets for this!

"What is behind my love of the land is that I am a Christian. I believe that God created the world and he came to this earth in the form of man. He sent his son, Jesus, who lived here and died here on behalf of mankind. He is a living God today, a living being, a living person. This gives me a direct relationship to the God who created the world. When I go out into the natural world, what I am actually doing is looking at the evidence of God all around me.

"When I think God loved us enough to come down to earth and be accused by the very creatures that He made, can you imagine how exciting that is for me? When I look at the world around me, it is a constant reminder of the existence of God. A God that loves mankind in spite of what we are. It is in all of life, but especially in the wilderness, and strongest when I am alone. That is why Waterwalker is a solo trip.

"My spiritual belief has shaped my obsession for the wilderness and the film presentation of the wilderness. My ecological concerns have grown out of my faith. It is a very important part of me. In Waterwalker I am sure you can see why there was terrible frustration of wanting to say a lot, but having to use discipline to say very little! I do not think there is anything worse than going to a film on a pretext and finding out it is something else. I do not want people to go there thinking they will see something that they won't! That's why it is pretty subtle. Even at the end, where Jesus called Peter to come to him across the water.

"Peter was doing just fine until he remembered that people are not supposed to walk across water, and he started to sink! Maybe we have just forgotten how to walk on water - that one line sums it up. We are fallen creatures, but because of God's love, he has enabled us to have this relationship with Him. It is not on our own abilities, purely an act of grace on the part of God. A lot of what I have to say is to churches. I believe that traditionally in certain evangelical churches we are given the command to give out the Word and share our faith with the people. To a great extent you will find that the churches have not much concern for ecology. After all, it is not our world, we are just passing through. That kind of philosophy seems to prevail. I find this reprehensible.

"Christians and people who claim to know their creator should be very concerned what we are doing to this world. It is Christians that should be in the ecological and environmental movements. They should be lending their voice to the preservation of the world around us. I had to go to the voices of the native people for speeches that find the deep ecological concern that I am talking about. In those speeches they said, 'When we lost the land to the white man, we could have told you so much of how to relate to it: we could have told you what we learned over the centuries. You did not listen to us. The white man never listened, and he is not listening now!'

"I have taken these quotes and put them up on the screen against the devastatingly beautiful scenery. That is why I think the film will work. It is not my word. It is their word. What else is left to say?

"We should perhaps rediscover what the Native People were saying about the environment. Many still believe what they did back then. They talk of love and a compassion for the world from which they extracted their living. You do not hear us talking that way. To us the land is where we go to get our natural resources, and that is all that matters. When we go to the wilderness it is to have a good time, and I think that this is typical of our culture. In Waterwalker I am trying to say: 'Go by yourself and see what is there. Open your eyes and see what is there!' Until we do this I do not see there is a lot of hope.

"But really, what I try to do is make positive films and the small negative bit in Waterwalker is more powerful because there is only a little of the negative set against the magnificent background of the wilderness."

Bill Mason, originally from Winnipeg, has been living in the Gatineau for nearly thirty years. He recalls in the late 1960s he had a wolf pack housed in his back yard. This enabled him to study the wolves at close range and aided in producing three of his famous wolf films: Death of a Legend, Wolf Pack, and Cry of the Wild.

Bill was quick to point out that Waterwalker is a homegrown product. Almost all of the people involved in the film are from the Gatineau: Ken Buck (photography), Alan Geldart (sound and editing), Alan Whatmough (music and commentary), Blake James (additonal photography). Also, Paul and Becky Mason, his son and daughter, helped in various capacities. And, of course, his wife, Joyce, is the production manager and chief critic. In fact, Bill says she does quite a bit of the typing, particularly the first-person commentary. "If she doesn't like it she won't type it," Bill said.

Joyce was much in evidence during my visit to their home. She was doing everything from rolling several hundred promotional posters with Sue Buck to be given out at the film's showings, to fielding phone calls, to making tea and doing the dishes. It is understood that she can also paddle a canoe and handle a camera at the same time!

The rest of the Mason family, son Paul and daughter Becky, are talented, award-winning filmmakers in their own right too. Their film Dragon Castle is showing with Waterwalker in Ottawa theatres this week. We should be proud to have such a terrific family living in our community.

Homer Cross
Photo: Courtesy of Mason family

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