Review: Boreal to Barrenlands - Crossing Labrador

A documentary capturing the beauty of Canadian landscapes

Photo: Alex Traynor/Northern Scavenger via Canadian Geographic

By Minh Truong

In the summer of 2019, four paddlers traversed through the Canadian last natural frontiers of Labrador. Their story did not go untold, however, as Boreal and Barrenlands - Crossing Labrador captures their expedition filled with joys, pains and lots of bugs. 

The documentary is directed by Alex Traynor and Noah Booth —  who were two of the four paddlers — and produced by Northern Scavengers. 

With the help of two DSLR cameras, a drone and a couple of action cameras, Boreal to Barrenlands stars Booth and Traynor themselves, along with David Greene and Chris Grand in a “vlogumentary” style. While it helps bring the emotional human side to the untamed nature of the voyage, the artistic style feels at times, a happy accident.

Photo: Boreal to Barrenlands - Crossing Labrador Official Trailer

The story follows the paddlers day by day from Jul. 15 to Aug. 18, 2019 as they start their trip in Labrador City to Nain, Labrador’s northernmost permanent settlement. Traynor’s narration unveils to the audience with expositions and explanations of what’s happening on screen, albeit sometimes it does clash with the vlogging narration as they recap their first few nights. Traynor and Booth planned to release a “daily vlog” series on YouTube going through their voyage in more detail. 

When the vlogumentary works, however, it can pull an emotional weight to the story. When starting off, the DSLR footage shows how tiny the paddlers are in the overwhelming and vast nature of Labrador. Meanwhile, the action camera point-of-view shots throw the audience straight into the action. One scene shows Traynor’s canoe snapping in half while paddling through the shallow river filled with rocks. As they tried to move the canoe off the rock, their food barrels and equipment bags started to float away as Traynor’s POV looked helpless. It is devastating to witness their struggle in the barrenlands. 

Noah Booth was ahead of them and saw the gears floating down. “The first [item] I saw was my new fly rod,” said Noah during a Question and Answer session at the documentary’s premiere. “So we started to collect and successfully recovered all of our food and gears.”

The most memorable aspect of the voyage is also one of the most disgusting parts of Labrador’s wilderness: bugs. From the very first night as they set up the camps, there was a rotation of mosquitoes and black flies.

“We wake up in the morning and between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. there would be mosquitoes, then [the mosquitoes] would rotate to black flies for the rest of the days,” said Booth.

“The bugs were constant during the trip,” said Traynor. “One night I tried to warm myself up by the flame and it engulfed my entire bug net.”

Besides the bugs, the torrential rain and brutal low temperature didn’t help either.

“It was kind of a summer trip, although it was 11 degree (fahrenheit) most of the time,” said Traynor. He also jammed his feet and numbed his toes from the cold while paddling.

Eventually, sickness got to the team and the morale became low. Booth had dysentery for a week, while Greene broke a tooth, risking an infection. The plan went from reaching Nain to just trying to make it to Mistastin Lake. 

Photo: Boreal to Barrenlands - Crossing Labrador Official Trailer

This is where Traynor’s snarky humour towards the situation and Booth’s excited reactions bring the human side to this adventure. One magical scene, when they reach Mistastin lake involving a care package filled with beer cans, is funny and relatable as the paddlers chugged the “rewarding” drinks after a tough travel.

Using a drone for filming was Traynor’s last-minute decision, and it paid off. Every piece of footage of extreme paddling and bug fighting comes with over the head shots of beautiful sceneries. The Mistastin River watershed with the Mistastin Lake is one of Canada’s last remaining wilderness frontiers. The drone shots feel like a reward after going through the hardship. A moment ago was an angry river, then a moment after was a calm sunny paddle on the lake of Mistatin. 

Traynor said the most rewarding aspect of the trip was that he decided to film it. The pelican case carrying the gears “was close to 20lbs”, according to Traynor. Booth also added that the canoes were 80lbs each as they dragged them, along with their equipment across forests, slogs and rivers. “I was like ‘Why the hell are we doing this trip?’ There is so much rain, so many bugs, we’ve been through forests after forests,” said Traynor. “It seems like so much work and little payoff, but Mistatin was a payoff with the ocean view and the waterfalls.”

Beside the insects, the wildlife is also another special star in the documentary, as Traynor hopes to bring forth an environmental message through their expedition. The vlogumentary style shines again as the paddlers encounter caribous, black bears, seals and even whales. Every encounter is whimsical on camera, but pretty intense in real life.

“The water near the ocean was so cold that I couldn’t put my hand in there for more than 10 seconds,” said Booth. “The seals were swimming really close to us and they kept diving around the canoes.”

It took six months to plan out the expedition. “There was no information online, only a handful of [notes from] wilderness travellers who went through Labrador,” said Booth. “Planning this trip was almost as hard as going on the trip.”

Photo: Boreal to Barrenlands - Crossing Labrador Official Trailer

He had been going to Labrador since 2014 and been blown away by its nature. “There were a lot of rivers and lakes, and the fishing was incredible”, said Booth. “Then I pitched the idea to Alex [Traynor] and he just laughed it off, but it turned out we got planning and got going.”

Asking about what they would take on their trip next time, Traynor replied “five cents gummies,” to everyone’s laughter.

Traynor and Booth premiered their documentary on February 21, 2019 in a brewery in Etobicoke. Adding to the immersion, the seats were actually foldable camping chairs. 

It was a small and cozy screening filled with laughter as well as gasps. The audience’s reaction describes my thoughts on the documentary. The combination of the simple “vlogging” method and the impressive sceneries of Labrador’s natural frontiers helps viewers connect with the four paddlers, rooting for them on their journey.

In memoriam of Dwayne Winsor, John Weaver II, John Weaver III, Matthew Weaver, Gilles Morin, James Slamon, and a fishing guide from N.L. who lost their lives in a plane crash in Mistastin Lake on Jul. 15, 2019, during the production of Boreal to Barrenlands.

Video: Northern Scavenger on YouTube

TIFF 2019 Review: There's Something in the Water

By Federico Sierra

Released at TIFF 2019, Ellen Page and Ian Daniel’s brave documentary There’s Something in the Water aims to expose corporations polluting the East-Canadian landscape. 

This film shows Page, a Canadian award-winning actress, stepping behind the camera in a personal effort to raise awareness against environmental racism targeted on small communities by large corporations. For decades the pollution of various ecosystems in Nova Scotia has gradually turned the land that used to be the home of hundreds of Indigenous and black people into a toxic wasteland.  

Based on Dr. Ingrid Waldron’s book of the same title, There’s Something in the Water brings this alarming but necessary truth to the attention of the masses. The filmmakers set out to amplify Dr. Waldron’s research by allowing the story to be told by the very same people affected by it. Page, a native of Nova Scotia, returns to her home province to meet the group of women who have been defending the natural rights of these communities and its inhabitants.

The film follows the chronicles of the filmmakers as they embark on a three-stop journey across the province. Each stop introduces us to the women who have been speaking out against the local government and corporations that they fault for the pollution of their land.

Louise, a descendent from African immigrants, shows us around her childhood neighbourhood in Shelbourne which is now plagued by high rates of various forms of cancer. Michelle, from Pictou Landing, tells the story of the time her grandfather (chief of the village) was tricked by businessmen into selling the rights of Boat Harbour — a small body of water — to be used by the local mill to dispose of their toxic residues. And last but not least, we meet the Grassroot Grandmothers, a group of vigilantes who have been protesting against the Alton Gas project to protect the waters of the Shubenacadie River where the gas company plans to build large caverns underneath it to store natural gas. According to Ellen Page’s interview with the Halifax Examiner, in order to do this, the company plans to remove salt deposits by dissolving them with water from the river, and then release the salt brine — a “deleterious substance” — back into the river, which the vigilante group argues is a risk to the fish who inhabit it.

This documentary is economic and efficient, clocking in at a refreshing 70 minutes. There’s Something in the Water runs at a swift pace delivering the right amount of information necessary to tell its story while generating awareness. Aided by haunting cinematography evoking the decayed state of the land, the filmmakers capture a decaying ecosystem. Gradually, we come to understand the devastation of the environment is linked to money and power.

Corruption runs deep in the waters of Nova Scotia. If we don’t take any action today, it will be our future generations who will have to face the consequences. There’s Something in the Water is an infuriating reminder that the fate of this planet lies in our hands. And thanks to the relentless group of women we come to meet during the film, we learn that compassion is the first step in the right direction.

The Divided Brain: The documentary that will change the way you experience life

By Ivonne Flores Kauffman

Photo courtesy The Divided Brain trailer

On April 9, The Divided Brain made its Canadian premiere at the Isabel Bader Theatre in downtown Toronto. The film, directed by Manfred Becker and produced by Canadian Vanessa Dylyn, seeks to explain how the human brain works and the importance it has regarding the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

Dylyn, who is an Emmy-nominated and Canadian Screen Award-winning producer, presented the film to the  audience. The Divided Brain is not the first documentary Dylyn has produced. She is responsible for other films such as Werner Herzog, a documentary about our relationship with volcanoes, The Woman Who Joined the Taliban, for CBC, and Leslie Caron: The Reluctant Star, an arts documentary on the career of actress Leslie Caron, star of An American in Paris.

The documentary was inspired by Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s book The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. McGilchrist, a soft-spoken British psychiatrist and neuroscientist, has a radical theory on the way our brain works. He believes most of the problems our planet is facing today are the result of our brains’ left hemisphere taking full control over our thoughts and perceptions of life.

The documentary argues that Western societies are failing to find balance when it comes to relationships, knowledge and Mother Nature. The world is facing critical economic, social and environmental issues. McGilchrist’s theory argues the reason behind these problems might be related to the idea that the left hemisphere has hijacked our brain and that it cannot see the full picture when it comes to our actions and thoughts. We could compare the left hemisphere as the way an extremely paranoid person thinks. They might be right about every single detail, but they are wrong about everything. The left hemisphere is excellent at organizing and accomplishing things. However, it fails to understand them in depth.

McGilchrist believes Westerners have focused on small details like making money, acquiring power and creating technologies; all of these pursuits dictated by the left hemisphere or as he calls it “the master of the brain.” However, according to him, if we used the right hemisphere with the same passion we allow the left one takes control, our world would be a much happier and healthier space. The right hemisphere in our brain is the one that dictates emotions such as love; it’s the one that can see the magnificence within Mother Nature and instead of destroying it, it understands our bodies are connected to it.

To support McGilchrist’s theory the documentary follows him around the world as he not only interviews experts but gets together with people who have lost the ability to use both of their brains’ hemispheres as result of strokes or other damages.

In addition, the documentary includes interviews with actor-comedian John Cleese, neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte, pioneering neuroscientist Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, neuroscientist Jurg Kesselring, Aboriginal elder and scientist Dr. Leroy Little Bear and neuroscientist Onur Gunturkun. All the subjects interviewed added some evidence to support Dr. McGilchrist’s theory. Dr. Kesselring invited some of his patients to show the way their brains work after suffering from different injuries that affected the efficiency with which they can either use the right or left hemisphere of their brain.  Dr. Little Bear explained Indigenous connection with Mother Nature could be traced to a more predominant use of the right hemisphere and a cultural deeper understanding of our relationship with Nature.

After the screening, author Carolyn Abraham hosted a discussion via Skype with McGilchrist, Dr. Norman Doidge, author of The Brain That Changes Itself, and Dr. Jordan Peterson who wrote 12 Rules for Life. The discussion allowed for the questioning of McGilchrist’s theory, which the psychiatrists present did not entirely agree.

Perhaps, McGilchrist’s theory is unconventional and can’t be proven, but given the crises we are facing today, it might be worth it to think critically about this documentary and actually look within ourselves to create a shift in the society.