FROM BBC TO TVO
Filmmaker returns to his roots with small screen Great Lakes series
Ted Oakes is an Ottawa-born zoologist who's spent more than two decades in England making natural history and wildlife films for the BBC.
On a visit back to the nation's capital in 2014, he happened to come across the toy canoe used by the late filmmaker Bill Mason in his 1966 odyssey, Paddle to the Sea, the famous National Film Board production that traces the canoe's long journey from Lake Superior to the ocean.
Like most Canadian students of his generation, Oakes, 61, had seen the Oscar-nominated film in school, and once met Mason while visiting his grandfather's cottage in the Gatineau Hills.
Standing in front of the artifact in its glass case in a community building in Chelsea, Que., got Oakes thinking. “It's time to do a natural history series on the Great Lakes watershed,” he mused, “and remind people why it's so important.”
Sure enough, that's what he and a top-notch team have accomplished with Great Lakes Untamed, a landmark three-part television documentary series that premières on TVO on Monday. The magnificent $3 million production not only showcases the stunning natural beauty of the five Great Lakes, but also explores the wildlife, the watershed and the impact of climate change.
“Really, what we're trying to do is give a Planet Earth-style treatment to the Great Lakes watershed,” says the documentarian, whose long career includes working with British broadcasting legend David Attenborough on some of his Planet Earth productions.
“It's the first time it's ever been done to this extent,” he added. “There have been some films about the environmental problems of the Great Lakes, but there hasn't been a TV series that looks at the spectacular natural history of the Great Lakes.”
To tell the story, Oakes joined forces with veteran Winnipeg-based producer Merit Jensen -Carr and assembled a team that includes co-directors Jeff Morales and Nicholas de Pencier, a crew of North America's most skilled nature cinematographers and a young Indigenous researcher, Chevaun Toulouse, who's from Sagamok Anishnawbek on the north shore of Lake Huron. Shooting took two years, with the extra challenge of working through the pandemic.
A big part of their mission was to stress the critical importance of the watershed, which stretches from Lake Superior to the St. Lawrence, and is home to some 30 million people on both sides of the border. The series notes, too, that the Ottawa River watershed and the water that flows through a huge network of caves beneath it are often considered the sixth Great Lake.
“This watershed is of global importance in a world short of fresh water,” Oakes said. “It holds nearly a quarter of the world's freshwater. It's our Amazon, but with more water. What I would like is for people to think of the greater Great Lakes system, the entire watershed, not just the five lakes. The quality of the water depends on what happens on the land behind it.”
The launch of the series is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a partnership between Canada and the U.S. designed to protect the watershed. Despite the efforts made over the years to rid the lakes of toxins, Oakes says more needs to be done.
“There's still a huge threat to the lakes,” he says. “Climate change is a threat to animals and people in the Great Lakes, but the bigger threat is development: Land use by humans. We have to do better.”
Though trained as a zoologist, with a master's from Queen's University and a PHD from Oxford, Oakes found himself working in Bristol, U.K., the global capital of natural history film production. He planned to stay in the industry for just a couple of years, but never left.
“I think the reason I didn't pursue an academic career is because I found that when academic zoologists write what they write ... they aren't really listened to,” he explained.
“As a filmmaker, I can reach many more people than I would through scientific papers.”
The content of the series encompasses animal behaviour, weather and physical phenomena, and stories about people in nature, all of it anchored by science. Some of the most striking images illustrate the impact of the climate crisis on wildlife, including scenes of moose infested with ticks that don't die off in the warming winters, wolves that have adapted to feed on fish and a pond full of hundreds of invasive carp hurling themselves out of the water.
Funded by several international partners, the series will be seen by millions around the world. In Canada, it's accompanied by an interactive educational program, titled Biinaagami, created in collaboration with Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the clean water non-profit, Swim Drink Fish.
In the end, with his view on Canada's natural world influenced by his years living in a deforested country like Britain, Oakes says he's learned not to take it for granted.
“We've got to do everything we can to protect nature,” he said ... “If we lose that, we lose who we are. It would suck the soul out of Canadians.”