Imax film offers vivid look at epic northern expedition
The film is really true to what we experienced and some of the things we learned and saw.
For 150 days in 2017, a rugged red and white former Coast Guard vessel, the Polar Prince, sailed from Toronto to Victoria, passing through the Northwest Passage and traversing nearly every kilometre of Canada’s coastline.
The passengers — 300 of them in all, who rotated in through 15 separate legs — included students and scientists, musicians and politicians, new Canadians and Indigenous Peoples, on a “celebratory and transformational expedition for all Canadians.”
A 46-minute Imax film of the Canada C3 expedition premières on Sunday, Canada Day, at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. The film runs all summer long and is free with museum admission.
“The film is really true to what we experienced and some of the things we learned and saw,” said Chelsea’s Geoff Green, the man who conceived and led the C3 expedition.
“In a way, we couldn’t have planned it better. A Canada Day launch and the Museum of History is the perfect venue for it. And that big screen just helps to increase the impact.”
First-time filmmakers Léonie Tremblay-Clavette and Claudine Bergeron spent three months in a log cabin in the Laurentians poring over some 50,000 shots, more than 300 interviews and thousands of hours of video footage to produce the final film, which was written by author Kate Harris.
“Initially it was going to be 24 minutes,” Green said.
“We had to go back to the museum and say, ‘ Would 46 minutes be OK?’ Fortunately, they said it was.”
Drone shots of Polar Prince, dwarfed by the stark Arctic landscape, are breathtaking when seen on the museum’s enormous Imax screen. But some of the most compelling scenes are when survivors of Canada’s residential school system share their stories with other C3 participants.
Three quarters of the 23,000-kilometre journey passed by Indigenous territory, and reconciliation was a central theme of the C3 expedition.
For Green, the highlight of the journey was when the ship altered course to visit remote and barren Putulik Island, where C3 participant Roger Hitkolik, a 70-year-old Inuk elder, was marooned as a boy with his family for three months by a fierce winter storm. Hitkolik was the first person to step ashore during the unscheduled stop and within minutes had found pieces of his father’s boat, untouched for more than 60 years.
“The hours we spent there encapsulated for me what C3 was all about,” Green said.
“Roger is an example of the incredible change that Inuit have gone through. He was born on the land and here he is near the end of his life surfing the internet. His connection to the land was so strong and having him on board to share that knowledge was incredible.”
The expedition ended in Victoria on Oct. 28. Scientists are still combing through the data they collected, which included everything from measuring ocean plastics to taking DNA samples to mapping the biodiversity of Canada’s three coastlines.
The Polar Prince, which was chartered for the C3 voyage from its private owners, has returned to its home port in Lunenburg, N.S. Green still has pipe dreams of using it again for more expeditions, building on the legacy of C3.
“I’m reminded almost constantly by my board that buying a ship is almost the dumbest thing you could possibly do,” he said with a laugh. “I know that, but I’m still interested.”
Canada C3 — Coast to Coast to Coast airs 12 times daily in both English and French at the Canadian Museum of History Imax theatre, beginning Sunday, July 1.