Though the Inuit and Innu have been
roaming these lands for millennia, British explorer Hesketh Prichard is the only known person to have crossed over the Labrador Plateau from Nain by canoe. He paddled— then abandoned his canoe and hiked—a route north of ours over a hundred years ago. Back in Vancouver, I’d looked at the maps and crafted a route that I thought made more sense than Prichard’s. Here’s hoping.
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On July 29th, Todd and I huddle behind a monolith on the shore of a large, unnamed lake while we wait for a heavy head wind to ease off. That’s the thing with the Labra- dor Plateau, it’s either windy or it’s buggy. Though it’s pleasantly bug-free behind this hunk of rock, we’re just sitting. Progress has been slow since we crested
the Poungasse and gazed across the Plateau’s moonscape of rock and heather. Many of the rivers and lakes shown on our maps are severely shallow, boulder-choked and un- navigable. As a result, we’ve had to be content with dragging slowly over the tundra with short spurts of paddling across small lakes. Averaging only 12 kilometers or so per day, it’s been a grind. The wind across the Plateau doesn’t make it
practical to carry the canoe so I’ve had to drag it overland with a line harnessed to my PFD. In the past week I’ve shot every conceivable dragging angle possible, to the point where the leading candidate for the film’s title is Dragging my Canoe across Nunatsiavut: A Fool’s Journey. Groping for a fresh perspective, I pull out
the rubber mosquito mask I’ve made for this trip. I slip it over my head and strip down to my briefs. Having recently filmed super close-ups of mosquitoes and their natural movements as they crawl over various parts of my body, I begin filming a sequence where I crawl, mosquito-like, around the tundra that will fade into a shot of a mosquito doing the same in the film. On a deeper level, I want this film to il-
lustrate the interconnectedness of all living things in the region—this scene will bridge the gap between man, mosquito and every- thing in between. The Inuit spoke of this connection during my interviews in Nain— though it’s unlikely they foresaw it this way.
68 SPRING 2013
“Prichard paddled—then abandoned his canoe and hiked—a route north of ours over a hundred years ago. Back in Vancouver, I’d looked at the maps and crafted a route I thought made more sense. Here’s hoping.”
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