A joyous geography lesson where a tour of the Great Lakes is made by a lone canoeist who experiences most of the cataclysmic changes of ages of lake history. Words of the lesson are sung in familiar ballad form.

Some animation is employed in the film to show the coming and going of the Ice Age when the lakes were born, but most of the other episodes of lake history are suggested by camera tricks that affect the canoeman and so emphasize the change. There is, for instance, a scene where open water suddenly turns to ice, freezing the canoe in mid-paddle. Such slapstick effects are employed to mark all the major changes in this history of the Great Lakes.


Review:
Both a documentary and a comedy. It features a man on a canoe tour of the Great Lakes while the geological time frame changes around him. He finds himself atop the great glacier, and then suddenly falling from the sky as it is removed. His canoe teeters from a cliff after the shoreline vanishes. He sips pure water from the lake as it suddenly changes to a modern polluted state.


Director: Bill Mason
Writer: Bill Mason

Blake James ... Canoeist

Country:Canada
Language:English

Won BAFTA Film Award.