by Anne Wheeler
I have an idea and yell out, “Towmiyomicrofooo!” My mouth is quivering, barely functioning. He can hardly hear me with his head wrapped in a scarf, toque, and fur-edged hood.
“Mike-crow-phone!” I try again, exaggerating as much as I can. He gets it!
Racing back to his machine, he pulls out his microphone, long cord and all. Swinging it above his head, like a cowboy roping a calf, he lets out a little more length with each rotation. Placing his aim, he hurls it toward me — but it lands outside my reach. The situation is becoming dire; I’m getting heavier and heavier, weaker and weaker.
With Kenny pulling it back, the microphone bounces on the ice.
Again, he spins it around and around until its trajectory is consistent. Then, he lets it go.
This time it plops down right beside me in the slush. I can’t bend my arms, but I am able to wind the cord around my wrist. Beyond that, I’m not much help. I have lost communication with my muscles; nothing works anymore.
Dry and naked, I weigh about 130 pounds, but now I’m a dead weight, shrouded in at least 50 pounds of soaking, wet clothing. Getting me out and onto the surface is difficult. Kenny tries from every direction, circling the watery hole, but I keep getting bogged down in the mushy ice. Finally, he finds an angle that provides a natural exit, so he is able to drag me up and over the lip of the crust and onto the ice. My wet clothes freeze immediately and I am encapsulated in a frozen cocoon — my right arm is rigid, stretched above my head, still connected to the cord, making me six feet long.
I hear him muttering as he drags me away, far from the hole, making sure we are on solid ice. Grabbing my hood, he gets me to his snowmobile. He cannot bend me to sit me down, so he attempts to balance me across the back of his seat, perpendicular. Swinging his leg high up above me, he manages to get on and start the motor, but as soon as he moves forward, I shift and roll off the back.
We start over and he tries to hold onto me, but again I slide from his grasp and land face down. He’s getting tired.
I find myself watching his efforts from above — detached from the real danger. What I see is funny and I start to laugh. It’s like I am watching myself perform in a skit from a television show from my childhood — I’m Carol Burnett or Lucille Ball and I’m in a brilliant comedy routine. What a perfect epitaph, I think to myself — “She died laughing!”
There is no pain, just a warm fuzzy numbness and a hazy sense of the surreal. I’m encased in ice and Kenny can’t get a good grip, so we cross the lake in this piecemeal manner, a few yards at a time, until we reach the shore.
Now we face the narrow winding path we made when snowmobiling through the forest this morning. Riding with me balanced perpendicularly across the seat is not an option. The trees on either side will wipe me off immediately.
The ice around my eyes makes everything blurry. Kenny bends down to see if I’m still alive, and I see his fuzzy form shadowing the light. Exhausted, he is breathing heavily as he gets right down within inches of my face. “Can you hear me?” I burble back from my other world. He nods. “I can’t hear anything with all this stuff on! I’m going to have to drag you ... don’t know what else to do.”
In championship time, he wraps the sound cord around my ankles, cinching it with a knot. Then, hanging onto the microphone, he gets back in his saddle and begins to pull me, feet first, behind him.
I am not completely sure what’s happening now. Looking up at the sky as we weave through the trees, I see a psychedelic symphony of light and distortion. And even though the snowmobile is roaring with exertion, for me it is absolutely silent, as though someone has turned off the sound. My rigid torso slides along the narrow path like a sled.
I’m still aware, though I have no sense of my body. My mind is racing, still asking questions. Is the joke really on us? Why is the water in this lake unfrozen beneath the surface? Is hot water from the retention pond making its way through the muskeg already? Even in the dead of winter — at this temperature?
With minimal resistance, we pick up speed. It’s all so trippy with the sun strobing through the trees, creating flashes of rainbows and cosmic explosions. There is nothing I can do, so I surrender completely, and feel at peace with my eyes partially glued open and life suspended.
When we get to the trailer camp, they carry me into the medical centre. A small hole is still open in my “casket,” and I can feel the burble of breath constantly reaching for life. I hear a cushion of whispered voices. There seems to be a lot of excitement and concern. I am weightless, but still moving — it is as though I am being called back from a sanctuary deep inside myself.
They crack open the ice around my face, and my head is liberated. They talk to me, but I can’t respond. I can’t understand them. What I hear is babbling nonsense. Random words jump out at me: “eyes — oxygen — lake — fingers — toes — miracle —” The face of an older man, a calm soul, pops into semi-focus, smiling at me, reassuring me that I will be fine. He looks like my father, like a god, and I believe him.
As they get rid of my icy shell, I go in and out of consciousness.
I flash back to the moment of revelation, when I realized that the ice wasn’t frozen, that the snowmobile was sinking. The epiphany plays and replays in my mind, a recurring nightmare — I have a sick feeling of betrayal, disappointment. What is happening forms a hodgepodge in my brain, stuttering in its attempt to understand: Why wasn’t the lake frozen out there? A message from beneath is trying to reach me: the warm water of the lake must be Nature’s way of telling me that all is not as it seems.
Once they break open my parka, I feel released. Now I can breathe more deeply and my head starts to clear. How many men are in this trailer, all staring at me, working on me? Someone is pulling off my boots; someone else is cutting off my ski pants. They are trying to save my life, working quickly, but I am horrified, embarrassed. I try to speak.
“Stop!” I try to say with as much strength and assertiveness as I can muster — but it comes out as a squeak, indecipherable. The older man comes back into view and looks concerned. “We need to get your clothes off. We need to get you warm. Your body temperature is very low.”
“No,” I plead, “I can do it myself.”
That slightly amuses him. “We’ll keep you covered ... no one will see you ... would that help, yes?” He nods at his team and they grab some extra blankets but —
“No! Please stop!”
I can see Kenny watching from the doorway, looking worried. “She was in the water for a long time…in fact, she was hysterical, laughing like a madwoman.”
The gentle man addresses the room, “Everyone but Peter (a young medic) get out of here — I will call you back in when I need you ...”
I can feel myself shaking now. Maybe Kenny is right; I am not myself yet. Consciousness of my body is just beginning to return, and I’m in shock.
The man covers me with a big warm blanket and works quickly. “All right now. We have to get these wet things off.” He sounds strict, like we’re running out of time. I’m a child and he’s a parent, taking care of me. But still I am reluctant — I want to stop him —
“Please ... don’t.” I have to take him into my confidence. “I ... I ...”
“You what? Is something hurting, something broken?”
“No ... back there, when I was laughing ... I ... peed myself ... and ...”
He starts to laugh. “You peed yourself! Really?” I am momentarily put off by his laugh. But he continues, “Well, that’s it then! My God!”
That’s what? I wonder. My nervous system is reconnecting and my mind is whirling.
He shakes his head in disbelief, “That explains it! I wondered how you managed to survive. The urine raised the temperature inside your icy shell and kept you from freezing to death. Thank the gods for your sense of humour, young woman ... your laughing, your peeing, saved your life!”
Like magic, my pants are instantly removed, and I am rolled into a warm blanket and wrapped up tightly like a new
born baby.
The room starts to spin again like I’ve had too much brandy. Drunk on life, I start to laugh again at what I remember of Kenny and me trying to cross the lake. I remember my howling with hilarity, the cloud of humidity rising like a smoke signal from the open hole in the ice. Where did that warm water come from? That’s what I want to know.
A few days later, after babying myself over the weekend at home, indulging in hot baths and hard liquor, I climb the stairs to our offices in Edmonton, to see the rushes from the forest and to talk about how to move the project forward. I suppose we’ll decide who will direct the film today.
When I arrive, the images are already flickering on the screen, and the guys are watching them silently. They like what they are seeing.
I am gearing myself up to talk about my suspicions — that there is something we are not being told. My concerns are just instinctual, not factual. Is this film is just a ruse, a distraction, a false assurance that the mining company and the government care about the impact on what they have described as “scrap land”: You can’t farm it; the timber isn’t worth much. I take a seat and watch the remaining footage — how am I going to put these thoughts into words?
The screening ends and we all grab a coffee before starting our meeting. No one mentions my “accident.” It’s as though nothing out of the ordinary happened — it was just another crazy near miss and we’ve had lots of those: I went for a cold swim and lost a snowmobile, but I survived. That’s yesterday’s news.
Obviously Syncrude didn’t make a big deal out of losing the snowmobile or I would have heard about it — I guess one Ski-Doo isn’t even a speck on their balance sheet. Unless they are pushed, they won’t look into why the ice on the lake had melted. Is there any point? That land is doomed regardless. No one wants to jump in front of this tidal wave of commerce that is going to hit the economy, resulting in the biggest mine ever imagined in North America.
But then, what if the Athabasca River becomes polluted and eventually runs into the Arctic Ocean and —
“So,” says Dale, with his usual wide and wonderful smile, “are you ready to direct this movie, Wheeler?”
I am shocked out of my reverie. Stunned. I thought I’d have to fight for the position. But here they are, just handing it to me. “It’s your turn.” They all agree without question.
What do I do? My concerns remain, but I immediately start to justify taking the job. Maybe I can address my concerns as we move forward. I will press the scientists to be truthful and public. Ask the hard questions. If we don’t grab this opportunity, we will not be there to see for ourselves what is happening. Maybe we are pawns, working for big business, but this extraction is going to happen regardless, and little me is not going to stop it. At the very least, I can bear witness and we can share what we know — hopefully that will make a difference.
It is amazing how quickly I can turn myself around. Without raising my hand, without expressing my concerns, without questioning my own motives, I accept the position of director with a voice full of excitement and drive. “It’s going to be a great film, an important film! Thank you, guys, for supporting me on this!” I hear myself say.
But my inner voice — the one that spoke to me that day on the lake — will come back to remind me for the rest of my life that some questions were never asked and some problems have never been solved. I will think of the hole in the ice — in the middle of that pretty little lake — every time I see pictures of the massive open pit that is the mine, or read about the high rates of cancer in Fort Chipewyan possibly due to water contamination, or hear accounts about the mutated fish caught in the Athabasca River hundreds of kilometres north of Fort McMurray. By 2017 the mining efforts covered an area of 220 square kilometres.
BY THE END OF THE YEAR, the little lake and the forest around it will no longer exist. That whole area will lie beneath the big retention “pond.” Time will tell what can or cannot be reclaimed. Civilizations are built on trade offs and I have accepted a few of my own.
We finished the documentary and in the end called it Trade Offs. I was proud of the film, of the work done by all of us, of the scientists who spoke openly, of the animation that clearly depicted the process used to extract the oil from the tar sands, now referred to as oil sands — so that people could ask their own questions. We were confident that the movie would be shown widely. It was politically balanced — giving voice to both sides of the environmental debate. But sadly, for me and for Filmwest, the materials, including the original footage, sound tracks, animation cells, A and B rolls, test prints — everything needed to make prints for distribution — were confiscated by Syncrude. They paid for it, owned it, and decided to pull the plug. Trade Offs was never screened publicly.
I’ll never really know what lay beneath that decision, but for me it was a turning point. I had gone against my better instincts, being ambitious, rationalizing that it would further my career.
I needed to rethink my choices. It isn’t enough to make a good film. Film, I realized, is an art, yes. But it is also a tool — and it is what is done with that tool, that matters.
THE DEVIL AND THE DIVINE
Bombay, India, 1976
HERE I AM, fresh off the plane from Edmonton, sitting on a curb in Bombay, waiting for a cab to take me to an ashram six hours south of here. Alone in a foreign land, I’m keeping to myself, fortified by my army surplus uniform, complete with thick-soled boots. I’m a no bullshit, strong-armed, liberated, keep your hands offa me kind of gal.
An elegant, older Indian woman sits down beside me. She is staring at me, studying my clothes before looking at me straight in the eyes. It’s a look that feels familiar, a look of knowing. It’s as though she understands what I am thinking. What does she see? That my being here is a mistake? That I am running away from something? I look away, trying to ignore her.
“Excuse me please.” She demands my attention, then cocks her head and shimmies her shoulders. “Why are you dressed like a man?”
It is not her business. I shrug and turn away. I’m in a foul mood, too tired to get up and move away from her. Besides, there’s nowhere else to sit. I’ll just concentrate on writing my postcard. She’ll get the message.
With a snap of her fingers, two cups of chai on a tray magically appear and she offers me one. Using my lower voice of power, I respond, flatly, “No thanks.”
I assume she’s all about the money. She wants to sell me something, hoodwink me, trick me. I’m blonde, buxom, and blue-eyed — an obvious target.
“Please, try it! It’s chai, tea. Very good.”
She holds the tea close to me. “It will refresh you. You look so hot and tired. Please. I see you are from somewhere else.”
What the hell? Why me? There are lots of other Westerners wandering about, much much richer than me.
She remains gracious and looks concerned. Her lilting accent sweetens her advance. “I cannot drink two cups of tea. Please, take it.” Her expression is so alluring and she’s not going away. It does smell good.
“You are very kind. But no, thank you.”
She continues to scan every inch of my body with her gaze. I’ve been travelling now for more than forty-eight hours, without sleep, and am feeling dizzy from exhaustion and heat. I must look and smell disgusting. My hair is greasy and flat and I would die for a bath. I shift away from her.
“Look at your boots! Are you in the military?” I look at her closely for the first time. She is wearing a beautiful sari and dainty sandals. A lovely ribbon that glows in the sunlight holds back her long thick hair. Her jewellery sparkles in the sun, even though it’s made of plastic. She wears bangles on her arms and legs and a dainty nose ring. Centred above her huge, inquiring eyes is a dazzling red bindi that flashes at me, again and again. I am dazzled.
“Well? Are you? A soldier?”
“No,” I reply, keeping it short.
“But these are heavy wool pants ... and this shirt, a man’s shirt, yes?”
&
nbsp; “I do a lot of physical work and these clothes are practical for what I do.”
She considers that for a moment. “You are not working now.”
“No,” I admit, “I’m not.”
“You are a lovely young woman and you want to be a man!”
The words spew out of me. “No! I don’t! I don’t want to be a man! Because I am not a man!” My own reaction surprises me. She has certainly pushed a psychological button. She’s either very perceptive or she’s reading my mind.
I recently resigned from a film collective that has been at the centre of my life for the last six years. My membership ended in a moment of rage, which I regret, but as the only woman filmmaker, I felt I was on the outside of an argument, again, trying to prove myself worthy of equal membership. Perhaps I was oversensitive, but my accumulated frustrations had reached a peak during a meeting over job assignments, and I exploded.
Real or perceived, I felt as though Filmwest — the company, or collective, as we sometimes called it — was fractured, and the egalitarian “model” we had established was falling apart. We didn’t all have equal power, equal say, or equal talent for certain roles assigned. Some of us did more work than others, but we all got paid the same. I completely lost my temper over something trivial and left in such turmoil that I fell down the back stairs of our office and broke my leg.
Honestly, it had been a long time coming. We’d been together through thick and thin and we had learned a lot. I was the first to leave and am feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.
My broken leg necessitated me staying put for some time, which was good. I had to give my situation some thought. I decided to get away for a while. It was time to travel on — and India was at the top of my “places to go” list.
So, here I sit, on a curb in India, wondering what am I going to do now? I’m not sure I want to make films on my own. It’s hard enough to put together a movie with the support of a group. Starting over again from scratch, alone, seems daunting. Maybe I will have to find something else to do with my life.