The Canadian Renaissance man
Lovely film captures the brave spirit and long life of Newfoundland actor Gordon Pinsent
Gordon Pinsent left the dominion of Newfoundland and came to Canada in 1948. Newfoundland itself would follow in less than a year, joining Confederation in March of 1949. Canada is a richer place for having both of them.
The actor, who turns 87 this year, recalls a storied life in The River of My Dreams, a new documentary by Brigitte Berman (Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel). Growing up poor in Grand Falls, Nfld. (two of his seven siblings died in infancy), Pinsent worked in the local paper mill before deciding to seek his fortunes on the mainland.
He seems to have relied as much on moxie as talent in the early days. He got a job as a dance instructor in Winnipeg, despite not knowing how to dance himself. He then got a start in theatre by passing himself off as an accomplished actor; paradoxically, an acting feat in itself!
Berman sometimes relies on sepia-toned, computer-generated, motion-captured re-enactments for the early days, which proves to be her biggest misstep. The poorly rendered CGI Pinsent can’t capture the fluidity of the real thing.
Pinsent married young and went through an acrimonious divorce. He later met fellow actor Charmion King, their 44 years of marriage ending with her death in 2007.
Fans and friends interviewed on camera include theatre critic Richard Ouzounian; director Norman Jewison, and Christopher Plummer, who remembers being pestered by a “whippersnapper” at the Stratford Festival, and told him to “f--- off.”
“We became friends later on,” Pinsent recalls with a smile.
Between clips of him in TV’s Quentin Durgens, M.P. and the made-in-Newfoundland film The Rowdyman, we see what a Renaissance man he is. Pinsent paints, writes some very moving poetry, and even hand-carved a wooden cabinet between jobs in the 1970s; its intricacy, he says, tells you how much time he had between jobs.
“I never really believed I was that great at anything,” he says, and in spite of all evidence to the contrary, we believe him.