RIDE ROUGH for Horses of McBride
Survival skills kicked in for actors shooting true TV movie in Alberta
Aidan Quinn is hardly a delicate flower. One of the stars of TV film The Horses of McBride, the American actor has been a movie tough guy for years. He lives in the country. He loves the wilderness.
But even he has his limits.
Moose Mountain in Alberta, for instance.
“When the wind is blowing and it’s 10 below and you’re up there at night and the wind chill is 30 below, it’s pretty rough,” says Quinn, sitting in the relative warmth of his trailer near Turner Valley.
“It’s a challenge to just literally get your words out without your teeth chattering or your mouth freezing. You don’t really have to worry about faking that or acting too much. You think about surviving.”
It’s early March and Quinn is not-so-fondly recalling his experiences a few days earlier, which found him shivering in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country.
Airing Sunday on CTV, the factbased Horses of McBride seems perfect for the holiday season, telling the tale of the family who led efforts to free two starving horses that had been aban- doned by their owner and had become trapped deep within the Canadian Rockies. It unites the citizens of McBride, B.C., who eventually drop everything to help the family dig a mile
long trench to free the starving equines. It’s all very heartwarming, even if the conditions during the four-week shoot earlier this year often weren’t.
Quinn plays Matt Davidson, the patriarch of the family. While the 53-yearold actor says there are limits to the sort of forced method acting he engaged in on Moose Mountain, he acknowledges the conditions certainly helped him find the rugged centre of his character. A cowboy-outfitter who has fallen on hard times, Davidson is in the midst of his own crisis when his strong-willed teenage daughter Nicki, played by MacKenzie Porter, insists the two horses be saved.
“There isn’t any profit in the type of outfitting he does, which is more traditional with horses,” says Quinn, who currently stars as the exasperated Capt. Toby Gregson in the TV Sherlock Holmes reboot, Elementary.
“It’s not quads and skidoos and heated cabins and warm showers, it’s more roughing it. He’s a real straightforward guy, but he’s fallen on hard times and decided he’s going to have to sell the ranch and get a job in the city.
“That’s what he’s up against when this whole thing happens.”
Horses of McBride is inspired by the Jeck family, who were at the centre of the real horse-saving efforts by the McBride community in December of 2008. The family — father David, daughter Toni and son Logan — showed up on the Alberta set for a few days and ended up giving the film their approval.
Porter had never played a character based on a real person before. So meeting the real thing was thrilling if more than a little daunting for the 22-year-old actress.
While the Medicine Hat native also grew up on a ranch, Porter admits to being decidedly more “girlie” than the character she was playing.
The Jeck family was watching when Porter shot the climactic scene where the rescuers break through the snowy wall and help the starving horses begin their descent down the mountain. It was appropriately chaotic, and Porter feared Toni Jeck might have questioned her horse-handling abilities.
“I was extremely nervous when (Toni) came out because I didn’t want to be telling her story wrong,” says Porter.
“These horses just took off. They were actually trapped in this area, so they saw the escape route like the animals in the real story would have. They started running and we needed to get walking for the shot. It was interesting. But Toni said that’s what happened in real life.”
While Horses of McBride takes place in British Columbia, its Alberta connections go beyond the locations used during the four-week shoot.
Former Calgarian Paul Gross, one of the executive producers of the movie, got the ball rolling after reading about the
It’s really about what’s good about being human ANNE WHEELER
McBride tale in the newspaper at the airport. He immediately called producing partner Frank Siracusa, who just happened to be reading the same article. Eventually, they met with the Jeck family about turning their story into a movie.
Anne Wheeler, the veteran Edmonton filmmaker behind 1989’s Bye Bye Blues and 1993’s The Diviners, was enlisted to write the screenplay and direct. Actress Kari Matchett, who grew up in Lethbridge, plays Matt’s wife Avril, joining Albertans Porter, Michelle Thrush and Dakota House in the cast. Even Quinn has a long history with the province, having starred in the Alberta-shot epics Legends of the Fall opposite Brad Pitt in 1993 and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee in 2007.
When it came time to find the equine stars of the film, producers turned to veteran Alberta wrangler John Scott, who spent months searching for horses that looked appropriately emaciated for the roles. One of the two horses, a sorrel mare named Lady, became the feel-good-story-withinthe-story after Scott rescued her from bleak conditions near Cochrane. After the shoot, she was adopted and now lives at a ranch near Calgary.
Wheeler grew up in Edmonton, but spent most summers in a small town near Wainwright, where she helped raise horses. She said the communal spirit of the story touched her.
Whether B.C. or Alberta, the tale is universal.
“I felt like I knew these folks,” says the director, bundled up during a break from shooting. “There was this sense that this community slowly but thoughtfully learned about this dilemma and did the right thing. I just thought it was a terrific true story. I found it inspired me. It’s one of those stories that can play any time. It is set at Christmas time, but it is really an anytime story. It’s really about what’s good about being human.”