Canada National Fillm Board: Wild Life (animation)
November 5, 2015 9:48 PM   Subscribe

This animated short tells the story of a dapper young remittance man, sent from England to Alberta to attempt ranching in 1909. However, his affection for [polo and] badminton, bird watching and liquor leaves him little time for wrangling cattle. It soon becomes clear that nothing in his refined upbringing has prepared him for the harsh conditions of the New World. A film about the beauty of the prairie, the pangs of homesickness and the folly of living dangerously out of context. [SLYT Canada NFB]

A Film by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilbis. Created over seven years, painted by hand en gouache and sequenced digitally, this delightful animated short (<15m) tells a poignant story of a posh gentleman immigrant on the Canadian prairies — for alas, British immigrants displayed a general ineptitude on rural farming enterprises. (Or did they?)

Nominations and awards: Academy Award nomination; Best Canadian Film, Ottawa International Animation Festival; Best Canadian Film, Halifax Film Festival; Special Jury Prize, Open Cinema Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia; First Prize, L'Alternativa, Barcelona; Best Animation, Yorkton Film Festival, Saskatchewan; Genie Nomination.

References Halley’s Comet as seen by Giotto by Ewen Paterson; Scoundrels, Dreamers & Second Sons by Mark Zuehlke; and The Correspondence of Charles Darwin.

Produced by Canada’s National Film Board (NFB).
posted by davidpriest.ca (11 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
fantastic short!
posted by growabrain at 10:05 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've seen many NFB animated shorts but this one in particular has stuck with me. Good stuff--thanks for posting it.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:08 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wow. That was gorgeous and quite moving.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:33 AM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


My maternal grandmother was left an orphan as a result of having a father who liked reading too much out on the Alberta prairie of the late 1800s. That's how I remember the story, anyway. He was always inside reading, leaving his wife to do all the farm work, even when she was pregnant. She died as a result, and not too long afterwards, he died, too. Not sure whether his death was because of a broken heart or because he had no-one to take care of him with his wife gone.

My grandmother grew up to be a tough-as-nails Alberta woman. She always liked reading, though, and kept the house well-stocked with books and magazines.
posted by clawsoon at 7:18 AM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


It’s a great video. And IMO, several of the links fleshing out the story of the remittance men are well worth reading. A fair few of these unqualified, unskilled, and unwanted men did well for themselves — and quite a few of them absolutely failed. Frontier Alberta in the early 20th century was truly the Last Best West.
posted by davidpriest.ca at 11:06 AM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


This is great, thank you for posting it.

I have a diary I'm slowly digitalising, written by my great-great-grandfather, a Yorkshireman, of his three month trip to Canada in 1910 to visit his eldest son and daughter who were farming a ranch in Saskatchewan. He was a keen photographer, and he took hundreds of pictures of the trip. It is fantastic, and I'm hoping to put it all online at some point.

But I didn't know much about the history of the Canadian praries, and I'd not heard about remittance men until now, so it's great to put it into context. I've not done much digging into my family's circumstances, I'm not sure if great-great-grandfather was supporting his children or not, although he is full of praise for the ranch and the way his son's farming it. His son and daughter married locals and stayed on the prairie until the 1930s when they moved west.

I'd love it if anyone can point me to more reading about the time and the lifestyle - I was going to start and AskMe at some point :-)
posted by Helga-woo at 1:26 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


Helga-woo: "Bowler-Hatted Cowboy" written in 1962 by by John Onslow influenced me as a young man NOT to emigrate to Alberta.
At the ending of WW2 the British government was encouraging demobilized men from the armed forces by offering them free acres of land. The book gives the harsh and agonizing details of establishing a ranch and just staying alive, even in the 1960's.
This book is available from Amazon.
posted by lungtaworld at 2:10 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby are an extraordinary pair of storytellers. I don't know how they do it, but their 1999 short When The Day Breaks set the bar very high as to what an animated film can do. I'm in awe each time I see it.
posted by cleroy at 4:19 PM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Thanks so much for this. I'd never seen it, and expected something more humourous, but I like what it is.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 6:53 PM on November 6, 2015


Wow. Thanks for that, cleroy. And thank goodness for the National Film Board.
posted by davidpriest.ca at 6:29 PM on November 7, 2015


i was reading Mavis Gallant's short stories and she talks about 'remittance men' whom she describes as being 'pensioned off'* by their families to live abroad after having brought the family into disgrace, but where it was really not disgrace so much as their parent was controlling and they were weak so a disagreement lead to it. *In the days when middle class people weren't people with good jobs but people who got income from stocks and shares. Don't ask i don't much understand myself
posted by maiamaia at 9:18 AM on November 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


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