Waterloo documentary on crossing guard has awesome response

I’m happy to be able to start the year with a good news story pertaining to the arts in Waterloo Region — specifically, a media arts story with a strong heritage component:

The long-awaited première of local filmmaker Rob Ring’s feature-length documentary “Care For The Child: The Story of the Bridgeport General” takes place this week Thursday, Jan. 11, starting 7 p.m. at the Princess Twin Cinemas in Waterloo.

That’s the first screening, which was sold out two days after it was first announced back in November. So they added a second — same venue, but next door starting 15 minutes later.

Now both shows are sold out, and a third screening has just been announced for Saturday, Jan. 13, in this case at the Original Princess starting at 2 p.m.

All three sessions will be followed by a Q&A session with members of the production team, and serve as an opportunity to purchase posters, limited edition prints and DVD copies of the film.

Two sold-out houses and the possibility of a third: this is an astonishing response to a madein-Waterloo film project promoted with little more than a few posters and social media posts.

And yet I’m not all that surprised: The column I wrote about this project in the spring of 2016 drew the biggest reaction from readers I’ve seen in the 20-plus years I’ve been doing this.

Most of the responses were from people who wanted to share memories of “The General” and what he meant to the Bridgeport community.

The première is happening almost exactly 40 years after this remarkable local personality passed away on January 10, 1978.

His story, as I outlined it going on two years ago, begins in 1962. This is when Frank Groff, on his own initiative, began working as a crossing guard for schoolchildren at the busy intersection of Bridge and Lancaster.

Groff was an eccentric who lived alone in a dilapidated house and wore the same clothes every day — rubber boots, woolly hat, layers of sweaters, and a raincoat held together with safety pins. But he was loved and trusted, and became an integral part of life in the village.

In 1973, Bridgeport was annexed by the City of Kitchener, which had rules about how crossing guards should appear and act. Groff refused to conform, so they fired him. The people of Bridgeport rose up in his defence.

When all was said and done, Groff was allowed to return to his post and continue with what had become his life’s work: caring for the children of Bridgeport, on his own terms.

Kitchener Councillor Frank Etherington, who was a reporter for The Record at the time, followed the story as it unfolded, and then went on to write a children’s book on the subject that was later turned into a play.

There’s even a city street and a playground named after The General.

Rob Ring didn’t know much about all this when he started his film project. The original inspiration was a portrait print of The General by artist Horst Maria Guilhauman that had been part of Ring’s home environment for as long as he could remember.

Testimony from Guilhauman, Etherington and a long list of relatives and Bridgeport neighbours figure prominently in the film. Newspaper clippings and images from the historical record complete the picture. There’s an original music score composed by Rob’s brother Ian Ring.

If you go, you’ll find out a great deal more about who Frank Groff was, and about Bridgeport back in the day, when it was a small, autonomous community.

For details on the première and the film project, go to bridgeportgeneral.com.