The Happy Camper: TVO Original Documentary TRIPPING The French River
Just over a year ago, Mitch Azaria, executive producer of Good Earth Productions, called me up asking if I could help in their latest TRIPPING documentary for TVO Original. He was looking for the perfect Ontario river to film a canoe trip. It had to be rich in history, have amazing scenery and limited portages since their film crew would have to haul tons of camera gear along the way. It was an easy choice—Ontario’s French River.
TVO Original TRIPPING The French River is the fifth film of the hugely successful TRIPPING series. Make sure to check out their previous docs: TRIPPING The Rideau Canal, TRIPPING The Niagara, TRIPPING The Bruce and TRIPPING Train 185. The documentaries are over three hours long and contain no narration and no music. The only audio is from the journey itself.
In the TRIPPING The French River episode, the viewer gets to experience—from the seat of a 16 feet (five metres) cedar canvas canoe—what a canoe trip would be like down the full 110-kilometre length of the French River, from Lake Nippissing to the expanse of Georgian Bay.
Mitch hired me to be a consultant for the documentary. My job was an easy one. I was to point out to him and the crew some of the most ideal spots to film along the river, highlighting the best rapids, cascades, abandoned towns, vertical cliffs, historic lodges and narrow channels.
Added to the canoe journey documentary are three animations sewn throughout: life inside a beaver lodge, travelling back in time to witness Indigenous paddlers navigating the river and past logging operations. There are also over 100 factoids embedded in the footage.
Historic remnants are visited along the way, including the French River ghost town complete with an abandoned steam tank and Alligator boat, a crumbling lighthouse and an old chimney from a sawdust furnace.
There are also interviews from Norm Dokis of the Dokis First Nations, who shows various native medicinal plants growing along the French, as well as cottage owner, Alex Strahan, who is renovating his cottage back to its original 1920s form.
This three-hour hypnotic tour down one of Ontario’s most important historic rivers—TVO Original TRIPPING The French River—airs, without interruption, on tvo.org and the TVO YouTube channel.
Check out my Whisky Fireside Chat with producer Mitch Azaria about the documentary on my KCHappyCamper YouTube channel—sponsored by Explore Magazine.
