His place to stand

I think I can recall the exact day I discovered my nationality. My younger sister Kate was there.

My parents – both transplanted Americans – were there. We had all made the trek from our home outside Toronto to Montreal. We couldn’t get hotel accommodation that summer of 1967, so we booked into a small trailer camp outside the city and planned our several days of sightseeing at Expo 67. Everything about the exposition was a thrill. But nothing – not Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, not Labyrinth, not the monorail nor even the hydrofoil on the St. Lawrence – could compare to my visit to the Ontario pavilion.

That’s where I discovered what it was to be proud of my home.

There, inside the pavilion theatre I was dazzled by a short film that had me sighing as if I were watching fireworks, shaking my head as if it was all a mirage, and breathless as if I’d just come off a roller coaster. And, as if that weren’t enough, I came out of the pavilion theatre singing a kind of anthem.

“Give us a place to stand. And a place to grow. And call this land On-tar-i-o. A place to stand. A place to grow, Ontari-ari-ari-o.”

It was only when I moved to Uxbridge – years later – that I really learned how it was meant for me to discover that pride in place. I met the filmmaker who created “A Place To Stand.” I knew the name Christopher Chapman. I’d read how he’d abandoned his job as a career in advertising in the 1950s, found a old 16-mm motion-picture camera and taught himself to shoot documentary film. And did he shoot film.

First was “The Seasons,” which won five awards, including Canadian film of the year in 1954. Then, he created a series of nature films – “Quetico” (about the provincial park), “Saguenay” for Aluminum Company of Canada, and “The Persistent Seed” and “The Enduring Wilderness” for the National Film Board. On one of those first occasions we met and talked about his life’s work, I asked Christopher to explain his films.

“They’re film tapestries,” he said. “Very little if any narration … but plenty of sound and images stitched together to tell a story.”

“But tapestries don’t bowl you over the way ‘A Place To Stand’ did,” I told him.

Until then, however, I didn’t know the half of what Christopher Chapman had accomplished with that film. Technically, it was a masterpiece – just 17 minutes long, but incorporating more than 100 minutes of film by superimposing multiple images on the original footage. It later became known as “travelling mat” or a frames moving across frames. And in order to make it work, he had to sketch or storyboard every edit. It took 350 pages of notes to plot out the 17-minute production – long before computer animation was even thought of.

“It was the most complicated film I ever attempted,” he admitted. “After 18 months of shooting and editing [and with Expo fast approaching] I thought I had a disaster on my hands.” But that’s when he “let himself go” by literally sitting on the roof of his home and waiting for his mind to clear.

And what’s in “A Place To Stand”? Just images of people, places, events, industry, nature, hustle, tranquillity – the sounds and sights of a province at a critical moment in the country’s history – Canada’s Centennial celebration. But there was something more there in the celluloid that only its filmmaker could explain. In fact, when the Government of Ontario (who financed the film) asked Christopher what he planned, he said:

“All I’m going to say is we’re going to make people feel good, whatever part of our country they come from. We’re not using language, except the song. So, whoever people are, they can relate…”

Everybody in the world can relate to the Oscar that “A Place To Stand” earned for its creator. Although, truth be known, Christopher and his wife and creative partner Glen, have never let such notoriety go to their heads; to this day, they use the Oscar as a door stop at Uxbridge their home. But as modest as he is about a lifetime of extraordinary filmmaking and success, Christopher has never lost touch with the value of his work. It made viewers, including a 17-year-old kid from Ontario, proud in ’67 when we most needed to be. In fact, not so long ago, Christopher commented,

“It would be great to revive such films … because we need a boost. We need to say ‘Rah-rah-rah. This country can make it.’”

One comment:

  1. I immigrated to Canada/Ontario some 30 years after the Expo and discovered this song accidently just a few months ago and I can say that I can relate to this song. We certainly need more of this song especially in the times we are in.

    Thank you for sharing your story Ted.

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