A magical story written for a young girl in the dying days of Soviet Russia
BRUCE STACEY WAS IN RUSSIA when he wrote a short story for his newly adopted daughter Elena. She was five years old, raised in an orphanage in what was then Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.
It was the early ’90s, a tumultuous time. The red banner of the Soviet Union was being replaced by the Russian tricolour. Communism was crumbling, the economy was collapsing and the nation seemed to be awash in children needing homes.
Stacey, a Hamilton-raised writer and composer, hoped the story he wrote would help ease Elsa’s transition from Russia to her new home in Canada where she would find not only a new world but a new brother and sister.
“While I was there I wrote this short story, trying to explain to this little Russian girl where she was coming from,” Stacey explains from his home Carlisle. “She was going to be my son and daughter’s sister, they were eight and 10 at the time. So I wrote a story called ‘Blue Daisies in the Summer of Winter,’ which unpacked the whole idea of communism. It’s an allegory, really.”
Stacey read it several times to the children when he returned home. They then moved onto other stories. ‘Blue Daisies,’ five-pages-long typewritten, was put away in a drawer where it sat for 25 years.
Three years ago — urged on by a Halifax animation company — he brought the story out of its drawer and began turning “Blue Daisies” into a feature film.
An evil ice dragon was added along the way, as were six original songs, four written by Stacey and another two co-written with Hamilton-area pop singer/composer Mark Underdown.
This weekend, the finished product — now titled “Ice Dragon: Legend of the Blue Daisies” — will open for a two-day run, March 17 and 18, in more than 65 Cineplex theatres across Canada. The following weekend, it will open in another 690 theatres in the United States.
“I’ve been hopscotching the U.S. and Canada doing interviews, television appearances, advance screeners and all that kind of stuff,” says Stacey, who produced and directed the film on a budget of less than $1 million.
“I’m home for a couple of days and then I’m off to Virginia Beach for another interview with ABC Family Channel.”
The film focuses on the animated characters Melody and her friend Leif who use the power of magical blue daisies and an ancient song to save their world from an evil ice dragon.
“Ice Dragon” is a standard goodtriumphs-over-evil story, still containing plenty of metaphors from the original version. Stacey says the blue daisies, a sign of hope and promise, were inspired by camomile, the Russian national flower, while the bitter storm of the Ice Dragon represented Communism.
“I love the parable, I love the allegory,” Stacey explains. “I’m a big fan of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. This is that ilk. It’s a story that everyone can enjoy, it’s entertaining, it’s an adventure, there’s a dragon. That’s the beauty of a parable.”
Stacey, through his Carlisle-based Chelsea Road Productions, has a long history of film and TV production, including a stint with Burlington- based Crossroads Global Media Group. Among his credits are “The Sky is Not the Limit: The Chris Hadfield Story,” “Goal of the Century, the Paul Henderson Story,” and “Walk of the Earth Christmas.”
After adopting Elena, Stacey and his wife, Elaine, returned to Russia to adopt another child, Alex. The couple now has two sons, two daughters and seven grandchildren. Elena is 32 now, and lives with her husband and three-year-old daughter, Chelsea, in Burlington.
Stacey’s grown children still remember the story of the blue daisies, and now their children have a new story in full animated splendour, one that also includes an ice dragon.
“All my grandkids have seen it,” says Stacey, 63.
“They were first in line when I had a version done, and they’re my worst critics.
“But I got a thumbs up.”