When I was interviewing Becky Mason earlier this week, I put my coffee cup down on the table and right there was Paddle to the Sea. Really. The little man that changed my life. The very one. The star of the film.

My mom would drive my brother and I to school on snow days (she didn't want us tearing up the house). The teachers didn't have a lesson plan and would gather us together in the gym to watch National Film Board films. Paddle to the Sea was my favourite.

Fast forward 30 years or so, and I'm the founder and publisher of Canoeroots magazine, I'm sitting in Bill Mason's daughters living room, and rubbing shoulders with my childhood hero. Cool.

I got to have dinner with Becky and her husband Reid at Canoe '09. While we were swapping stories Reid made a comment about the benefit of being able to name-drop Becky sometimes which seemed odd to me because at the time I had no idea who they were.

After looking up Reid and Becky when I got home I found my way to info about Becky's father, Bill. It made the name-dropping comment make a lot more sense. All that to say, I ended up borrowing Paddle to the Sea from a local library and as shortly after, having no memory of having seen the video before until I saw Paddle. I remembered watching the video in school several times as a child--it was always one of my favourites.

I guess that's a roundabout way of saying "I think that's cool."

That little carved Indian man changed my life, or at least shaped it enough. Canoeroots would not be today if not for that film.

Thanks Bill Mason.

If you don't mind my asking, how exactly did Paddle to the Sea impact you or what was it about the film that left such a great impression on you (or anyone else that happens to read this)? Personally, one of the images that always stuck with me from that video was the fellow taking a drink of water from a river, which ends up being full of pollutants. As a child this was a really potent image of the effect we were having on our waterways. This may sound odd, I have quite literally thought of that image every time I've seen foam gathered up in a waterway. It was quite a bit different watching the film as an adult.

Obviously what I know of Bill Mason is still very abstract, but after having read Song of the Paddle and seeing some of the incredible enthusiasm he had for the natural world and paddling in particular, he obviously touched a lot of people about something he was very passionate about. That's a great way to have lived.

'Paddle to the Sea' was an important film for me, but in a very subtle way.

When I was in elementary school in the 70's in Laval, Quebec, 'Paddle To the Sea' was presented to the whole school on a large screen in the gymnasium. I don't know why they did this, but it was one of several NFB films shown to the whole school. I can still remember sitting there in the dark on the gym floor, cross-legged, with the entire student body around me, and I was completely enthralled by the story and images. It was shown again the following year to all of us, and I was thrilled to see it again. I remember being taken aback when some of my classmates didn't remember seeing it just a year earlier. I'd been so captivated I couldn't believe that anyone could have forgotten such a movie. Clearly it didn't speak to everyone the same way.

For years that simple story and those images stuck in my mind and I fantasized about carving my own version of 'Paddle'. I never did of course, but the movie left me with a feeling that Canada was a place navigable by water, that the canoe was the appropriate vehicle, and that traveling this way would be beautiful, exciting, at times dangerous, and that this ancient means of travel was under threat by our modern way of life. I never consciously connected these impressions I had about Canada with the movie I'd seen in childhood until years later, when I was in my early 30s; it aired on TV late one night. I was just tickled to see it again after so many years and surprised by how accurate and vivid my recollection of it had been, despite not having seen it since I was about 10 years old. Watching it again, as an adult, I recognized it as a source of some of my ecological leanings and attitudes.

While I had done plenty of backpacking in my life, I did not begin canoeing and canoe-camping until I was in my thirties, and when I did, Bill Mason's 'Path of the Paddle' instructional videos and books figured very significantly in my paddling development. Mason became more than a source of how-to knowledge to me; his vision of wilderness tripping was a source of inspiration for me. My wife and I retired early so we could devote more of our time to canoe-tripping. It was only after I became enamored of Mason's 'Path of the Paddle' series that I stumbled upon the fact that it was he who'd filmed 'Paddle to the Sea'. What a pleasant surprise! I feel as if that man has been influencing my psyche for most of my life, first with 'Paddle to the Sea' in my early formative years, and later, more directly and consciously, with his instructional videos and books about canoeing and canoe-camping.

One last note for Scott; there were in fact several 'Paddle to the Sea' carvings made for the movie. James Raffan's very fine biography of Bill Mason mentions this fact, as I recall. For any others who are fans of Bill Mason, James Raffan's biography of Bill Mason is called 'Fire in the Bones' and is the best biography I've ever read of anyone.

Cheers,
Martin

I enjoyed spending the day with Scott and his editor and videographer. I did check their pockets at the end of the day to see if my Paddle to the Sea was going on adventure with them. It was lovely getting to know Scott and his crew. I look forward to seeing the paddling interview in print and via the video clips.