Synopsis

Award-winning director and cinematographer Dianne Whelan is the only person to complete this epic journey of discovery—hiking, biking, paddling, snowshoeing and skiing across the country.

For a woman in her 50s who is not an extreme athlete, it was sometimes gruelling, occasionally harrowing, often exhilarating and always surprising. She started out alone, disillusioned with state of the world and worried about climate change, to look for different ways of caring for the land and for each other. She ended the journey a bit wiser, more hopeful, in love and with a passion to share this story.

500 Days in the Wild is a feature documentary that weaves intimate moments of reflection with adventure and stories of the people and communities that she encountered along the way.

Climate change is a silent theme unfolding in the landscapes; melting permafrost in the Arctic, salmon in the Mackenzie River, record-breaking 120°F heat and fires in the BC interior.

This journey began on July 1, 2015, in St. John’s NL and ended on August 1, 2021, in Victoria, BC. Although the Trans-Canada trail was built to celebrate 150 years of confederation under the government’s banner of “Strong, Proud and Free,” 500 Days will present an alternate story, another vision of this country, its past and its future.

There are adventure scenes of paddling rapids, struggling in storms, escaping a bear attempting to destroy her camp in the High Arctic or the perils of being alone in a canoe on one of the biggest inland seas in the world.

And there is of course humour —many good belly-laughs about the absurdity of the situations she occasionally found herself in.

“It’s kind of funny when I think about it now. When I left I actually had a daily schedule—and by day 10 I had not even completed what I thought I could do in one day. So I lit a small fire, and burned the schedule. And I stopped measuring my journey by how many kilometers I did in a day. I joke with people and tell them that’s the day I dropped the rabbit suit.

It is a very humbling experience to be a fragile being alone on the vast waters of Lake Superior or deep in the woods on an old fur trader trail in Quebec. But then something ancient wakes up in your DNA, and you feel more connected to life than you ever have. You are not on the water paddling, you are with the water paddling. You are not on the earth walking, you are part of her and every bird, plant, tree, animal, dragonfly, butterfly, with all life—except the ticks and the black flies, I never did develop a love for either of them.”

Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Cree, Anishinaabe, Lakota Dakota, Dene, Metis, Inuit, and the Coast Salish, as well as several non-indigenous communities contributed to Dianne’s new understanding and ways of thinking about the web of life.She was periodically joined by friends, mostly queer, and all but one are women, and all are between 40-60 in age.

Dianne fell in love during the course of the journey. Her partner Louisa joined her on the 4,000 km paddle from Alberta to the Arctic Ocean. Louisa also moved into an off-grid support vehicle during the final year and a half and resupplied Dianne by meeting up on back roads that intersected the trail when Covid restrictions came into effect, so Dianne could avoid going into local communities to resupply. Covid changed the journey as Dianne could no longer spend time with people, listening, learning, creating art with them. But there was time to contemplate the beauty of nature, time to sit quietly and film waters, animals, birds, plants, trees and all life we share these lands with, and in that way the journey did not change.

WERE IS THE PROJECT AT NOW?

After a year in the edit room working with the six years of footage gathered on the Trail – 800 hours – as well as thousands of stills, we are now finsihing up the picture edit and moving on to the final stages of sound edit, music, with an anticipated finish in late 2023. Distributor Elevation Pictures is on board and broadcast/streaming will be available in 2024 on Paramount+ Canada. And…there is also a book in progress.

ADDITIONAL INFO

Telefilm Canada, Paramount+ and Elevation Pictures are on board this theatrical feature, with additional support from the Canada Council, Rogers Documentary Fund, the Audience Award at DocPitch 2020, the Royal Geographic Society and Saskatchewan Tourism. A host of private individuals have also made donations through Canadian Parks and Wilderness (for Canadian contributors) and The Film Collaborative is processing US donations.

THE TEAM

Director and Executive Producer Dianne Whelan is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker, photographer, author and multimedia artist residing in Garden Bay, BC. With every project, she tries to multi-platform the stories into films, books and interactive projects. Mount Everest Base Camp was the site of her award-winning documentary film 40 Days at Base Camp. Her first book, This Vanishing Land, references her experience as an embedded media person on a historical Sovereignty Patrol in the Canadian High Arctic, and her film This Land, is based on the same journey.

Producer Betsy Carson is an award-winning producer/EP/director with over 33 years of experience in documentary film, television, and digital projects. She has collaborated for decades with filmmakers Nettie Wild, Gary Marcuse, Hugh Brody and Mark Achbar, and has produced over 100 hours of documentary projects ranging from series television to theatrical features, as well as interactive sites, VR and public art installations.

EP Christine Haebler is an Executive Producer and Producer, with more than 34 years of experience at the helm of many international motion pictures. Her credits include Bones of Crows, French Exit, Indian Horse, Hector and the Search for Happiness, Warriors Gate and Shut In among the many hours she has produced.