Tour the Rideau Canal with new documentary
Television viewers would not normally have the patience to watch a four-hour documentary in one sitting.
Of course, these are not normal times.
If you’re seeking to fill the void of endless hours of isolation at home, a new TVO documentary promises to occupy an entire evening with a blissful distraction — a leisurely cruise along the Rideau Canal in a classic mahogany runabout.
TRIPPING the Rideau Canal is a first for Canadian television, a longform documentary that takes its cues from the slow-TV movement, which is widely considered to have originated in Norway, the country that brought its residents along on a seven-hour train journey in 2009.
The unhurried journey depicted in TRIPPING takes us 27 kilometres up the Rideau Canal waterway from the village of Manotick to downtown Ottawa on a beautiful late-summer day. The sky is blue, the water is calm and trees along the shore are dappled with red.
There’s no narration, no soundtrack, no drama and no plot — beyond the simple desire to get to the Ottawa River. Eventually.
We see (and hear) ducks, seagulls and geese along the way, as well as kayakers, canoeists and at least one intrepid swimmer.
The film is beautifully shot, more or less in real time at eye level from the boat, plus well-placed drone shots that give a bird’s-eye view of the starting and ending points, and the impressive Hog’s Back Falls.
The journey also has an educational component, with unobtrusive captions relaying historical facts about the Canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built in 1832.
The documentary is the work of Good Earth Productions, the Toronto-based company that also produced the Great Canadian Rivers series for TV O. According to executive producer Mitch Azaria, the initial concept of a four-hour project came from TVO commissioning editors Jane Jankovic and Linda Fong.
“We had this idea that it had to be a journey because if you’re going to do something for any period of time, things have to go by the camera,” he said.
“We had a list that included car rides, train rides, a dog sled ride, a boat going across a lake, and then we came down to two, the Rideau Canal or the Welland.”
They scouted both locations, but the Rideau was everyone’s favourite. “It’s not just incredibly beautiful but it’s got such a great history,” said the 59-year-old producer. “You can see how much the scenery changes in four hours.”
Picking the right watercraft was another key element of the process. To find a boat that was an eye-catching, comfortable ride with a “cool” factor, they approached the Manotick Classic
Boat Club. President Randy McKendry and his wife, Dawn, had the perfect vessel — a sleek 1948 mahogany Shepherd — and were happy to participate.
Then the producers had to wait for the weather to co-operate. Most of the shoot happened early on a weekday in late September last year, near the end of boating season.
“The size of the lens and the speed of the boat had to work perfectly — if we went a mile an hour faster or slower, it wouldn’t be the same, and if we used a lens that wasn’t exactly like what you see with the human eye, it would seem too claustrophobic or too wide. We rented a $300,000 mount that had the ability to pan and tilt in the same way that your head would pan and tilt.”
In the end, it’s a trek that has a calming, meditative effect, except for some of the surprising animated sequences. While few people are likely to watch all four hours at once, dipping into it for an hour or so at a time provides a soothing escape from the news.
The documentary premieres at 7 p.m. April 10 on TVO, repeats at 11 p.m. April 12 and is available to stream on tvo.org beginning at 7 p.m. April 10.
Bonus features are also available at trippingtherideau.ca. They include six short stories shot in 360-degree virtual reality and 10 behind-the-scenes segments that follow the crew as they solve the challenges of making a four-hour documentary. lsaxberg@postmedia.com