Canada Wrap-Up

So this is how it went. We drove up from Atlanta, through the Devil land of Indiana, to Chicago. From there we hit Canada. We filmed around Ontario for five days, starting in a little lakeside town called Port Elgin, which as I already mentioned, thinks it has the best sunsets in the world.

At Port Elgin we stayed at the Canadian Auto Workers Union retreat center, which was a nice, big place built on the backs of unionized labor. There we interviewed the current and former president of the CAW, shot an interview on the Lake Huron beach, and ate like kings. Apparently on the last night, when we were conspicuously absent at some snazzy Swiss resteraunt in the town, we (the crew) recieved a standing ovation from the Sociali---er, Union people.

I guess at this point I could mention the crew which was me as the key grip (well, the only grip) Andrew as Sound, Brandon Thompson (a good friend) as DP and steadicam operator, two fine fellows named Ethan and Jason (new friends) on camera, and our editor/field producer Jare from New Mexico.

Brandon is often confused by things.

LaToya (Andrew's wife) was hanging around taking stills, and to round it out we had a volunteer Canadian named Karen conducting the interviews for us since she new most of the people, herself being deeply involved in trying to unionize Canada's clergy. Her husband is or was a minister, I believe. Oh, and this guy was there as well, since he wrote a book on the subject of "clergy killers" (the main focus of the doc.)

Right before we left Port Elgin we recieved news that one of our subject's had suffered a heart attack and died, so we couldn't interview him or his wife anymore....obviously.

Our next stop was a big college town south of Toronto called Hamilton, where we filmed two interviews. The first was at the McMaster University where we interviewed a sociology professor, who Karen kept calling a socialist instead of sociologist. He didn't mind of course, since he was a socialist. His interivew was a wash because all he did was rant about workers rights or something stupid like that. I don't know, I wasn't listening.

Hamilton was a cool town, and while we were eating at a British Pub called the Snooty Fox, we encountered a party for a Canadian swimming olympiad who attented the university. She let us check out her medals from Bejing. I tried to pocket the gold one, but LaToya kept frowning at me for some reason.

After Friday everything fell apart, interview wise. Other than the guy who died, another fellow fell ill and was taken to the hospital, and a third subject pulled out because he was afraid we were making a hit piece. Satruday we filmed some lame stuff then hit Toronto, which is nice but no more special than any big American city, and less impressive to me then Melbourne or Sydney. Lake Ontario is, however, just as gorgeously blue as Lake Huron.

Sunday we wrapped at Karen's house in the countrside, where she and her family fed us an amazing lunch before Andrew and I loaded up the van and heading back to Chicago. Monday was spent almost entirely on the road.


All in all a decent adventure, in good company. The producer was telling Andrew and I that there was more work ahead through the month of October as they try to get everything finished (the doc is 2 years in the making already) and we could be going to Sydney or Rome at some point. I'm a bit skeptical, but Canada worked out, so I guess we shall see.