In the face of current climate disaster, there’s a lot to be learned from the Canadian naturalist, conservationist and filmmaker’s brand of observational storytelling.
Canadian scholars across all fields have effectively observed how canoeing has helped shape the nation’s economy and culture. Renowned naturalist, artist, filmmaker, and conservationist Bill Mason himself would learn and appreciate this hobby on his family’s vacations to Manitoba’s Grand Beach. These trips would also expand Mason’s imagination beyond his puritanical upbringing. Initially captivated by tales in the Bible from his matriarch God-fearing grandmother, the art of storytelling consumed in adventure tales like Treasure Island and leisure time spent daydreaming by the river ignited Mason’s connection between the creative and the spiritual. All leading to a life dedicated to the practice of the canoe as a bridge to experience nature in its most inhibited.
Driven by a purely curious urge to share what he found outdoors, tired of his day job in commercial art, and utterly moved by a screening of Christopher Chapman’s short The Seasons, Mason would strike up a friendship with Chapman in hopes of learning more about filmmaking. Thus began Mason’s three-week crash course in film through the Quetico Provincial Park. Mason watched Chapman like a hawk as they collaborated on the 1958 short Quietco; his own sacred admiration for outdoor scenery would blossom into a necessity for preserving the human spirit, honing statements previously shared by legendary environmentalist Sigurd Olson.
Once on his own, Mason motivated himself through a “learn as you work” approach. After years of working on other projects, he would eventually quit his comfortable art director position in 1962 to embark on his first solo canoe trek through Lake Superior. Not long after, Bill Mason would finally get funding from the National Film Board of Canada (NFBC) to make his own projects – a career that would fully bloom with his 1966 adaptation of the beloved children’s book Paddle to the Sea.
Mason’s filmography would subsequently evolve from exploring the simple beauties of nature to a full-fledged environmental thesis statement. In our current era of overconsumption and generative AI damaging creative industries with a race-to-the-bottom mindset, Mason’s methodical approach to art appears revolutionary. Holling C. Holling’s aforementioned picture book is often used in elementary schools to help young minds visualize the Great Lakes from Ontario to Superior, which becomes their primary understanding of geography for many northeastern residents of North America.
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Mason’s interpretation of Paddle to the Sea cleverly twists this simple lesson to incorporate modern concerns about water pollution and forest fires, resulting in an ominous narrated statement unique to the short film. The biggest distinction between the two is that Holling’s work, published in the 1940s, doesn’t have the modern insights to address these dangers. Yet in Mason’s vision, a lone seagull flies frantically into the smog caused by wildfires while the narrator solemnly states, “Paddle did float for he was made of wood, but he could also burn”.
In both the literary and cinematic iterations, Paddle to the Sea starts by telling the story of a young First Nations boy lovingly carving a piece of wood into the figure of a canoeist he names Paddle. With a whimsical, childlike desire to traverse the entire Great Lakes, the boy decides to send this wooden toy on a journey to fulfill his dream. Under the toy canoe is the message “Please put me back in the water. I am Paddle-to-the-Sea”, read by all humans who pick up Paddle on his journey.
Mason majestically brings Holling C. Holling’s natural world to life as his first project with creative control. With direction, cinematography, and editing all performed by Mason, he could depict the great outdoors as he saw fit. Seagulls, squirrels and water snakes engage curiously with the wooden figure through naturalistic interactions shot in real time, often unplanned, with narration courtesy of NFBC veteran Stanley Jackson providing additional insight. Considering Mason’s commitment to wolf conservation (his 1972 doc Cry of the Wild would become the NFBC’s most financially successful feature at the time of release), even in his filmmaking infancy, Bill Mason had a singular artistic power of presenting the ecosystem before him purely, with minimal manufactured interference.
With an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film, Bill Mason’s new accolades would embolden him to push this earnest display of environmentalism with The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes. Continuing his cooperation with the NFBC and marking his first intensive partnership with prolific collaborator Blake James, a stable foundation of resources enabled Mason to experiment with new, intricate techniques. This 1968 short is a classic case of bait and switch – opening as a quirky educational tour of the Great Lakes, only to subversively morph into a work of slapstick satire with match cuts and canoe-oriented stunts that result in nothing short of “movie magic”.
Like Paddle to the Sea before it, The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes opens with the roar of waves crashing on the lakes, leading into a pastoral folk song by Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce MacKay describing the lakes as “five jewels beneath the sun”. Tracing their genesis during the Ice Age, the balladry narration provided by MacKay, paired with Blake James’ comic acting and Mason’s keen eye for assembling the strongest images of the great outdoors, presents a fully cohesive thesis on how humans have impacted this region, for better or worse. In a final effective match cut, James – in a moment of respite as the canoeing figure – takes a drink from the lake only to make the shocking discovery that the water has been replaced with polluted liquid. He paddles through the sludge as MacKay’s crooning assures us these changes keep the world going round, a bittersweet statement that continues to ring true as the proliferation of AI data centers built across the country creates new ecological and health concerns.
Over the span of making these two shorts between 1966 and 1968, Bill Mason experienced a heart attack, the first of many health setbacks of his career. Yet Mason possessed an indefatigable tenacity, and recovering only encouraged him to push his creative prospects further – whether they be filmmaking, giving seminars, or writing. According to James Raffan’s invaluable biography on Mason, he’d even write to his mentor Christopher Chapman that his health scare was “a great thing to make you appreciate living.” Such glowing insights into his personal life highlight a deeply aspirational view of optimism and pride that’s rare among current media figures.
This ethos of bright hope would glimmer in Mason’s most explicitly family-oriented project and arguably his strongest work, Song of the Paddle. Sequencing the Mason Family’s canoe trip down Lake Superior and the tranquil beauty surrounding them, they pause for birdwatching and observing other animals. Through the engaged remarks from the two children, it’s clear that their father’s unwavering passion for nature left an indelible impression on them both early on.
In a pivotal scene near the film’s opening, Bill and his daughter Becky exchange banter regarding a slug on one of their canoe paddles. “What do you mean, ‘yuck’?!” Bill says to Becky, “He’s just trying to make a living like everything else.” As he places the animal back into the water, he shares an essential fatherly anecdote: “You don’t have to like them, just don’t be afraid of them.” When not sharing these gems out loud, Bill Mason spends his voiceover monologues waxing poetic on the integral necessity of learning to live in the natural world amidst increasing modernity.
With these short films alone, Mason established a resonant film language of relentless hope against a fast-paced tech-consumed world. As the future of cinema continues to look uncertain, these three shorts not only highlight the tenacity of Bill Mason as a filmmaker, but also imply that the key to “saving” film – or any art for that matter – could be as simple as spending time outdoors with the ones you love, and finding the cinematic beauty in what’s right in front of you.
