The Last of the River People

I was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My first job after the NAIT two year Radio and TV Arts program was as a master control operator at CHBC-TV in Kelowna. I disliked the lack of creativity required by the job and returned to Edmonton where eventually I got a part-time radio job at CKUA where I hosted a Saturday and Sunday night progressive rock program that I called "Beat the Heat of the Night". It was an amazing first radio job because of the people that I got to work with. I worked briefly at CITV in Edmonton as a production assistant (PA) and film editor (before large-scale use of video). Then I was on to university for four years of history and English. Of course an undergraduate degree didn't prepare me for the working world so I returned to what I knew...radio, and got a very good job at CKRA-FM in Edmonton as a public affairs producer, interviewer, editor and news reader. From there I moved to Calgary where I worked for six years at CFAC-AM 960 as a newscaster and desk editor. All this time I was shooting film for other filmmakers and making my own films on the side. I made my first film in Calgary, a short 16mm film called "The Gap" that was screened as the final film of the original Local Heroes Festival in Edmonton. It wound up being screened at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, at the Sudbury Cinefest, the Montreal Museum of Modern Art, The Squamish, B.C. Film Festival, an international festival in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and on KSPS-TV, Spokane, WA. My second film was a documentary about the construction of Edmonton's High Level Bridge, called "Steel Ghost". It premiered before members of the Edmonton and District Historical Society in January of 1999, and was broadcast on the PBS affiliate, KSPS-TV, Spokane, on Canada Day, July 1, 1999. My third film, "The Devil’s Breath: The Story of the Hillcrest Mine Disaster" premiered at The Frank Slide Interpretive Centre on June 18th, 2004, and in Calgary on July 18th, 2004 at the Uptown Theatre. When I lived in Richmond, BC on the lower mainland, at the same time I was writing the second draft of my book about the Hillcrest coal mine disaster, I visited Finn Slough with my video camera and captured what I saw there. It was, like most of my films a project of discovery. I had no advance plan. I knew only that I wanted the people of Finn Slough to tell their story in their own way. I had no agenda and I let my muse show me the path. "The Last of the River People" was screened to audiences by the Richmond Archives during the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. My two most recent films are “A Personal Account of the 2013 Southern Alberta Flood: Erlton Road”, and “The Spirit of the Bow”.