Survival of the fittest

Come explore the mystical Manitoba North

Nicholas MacMahon, staff

The pyramids of Egypt, Hadrian’s Wall and Notre Dame Cathedral are among the greatest architectural feats of human civilization. What if I told you that our beloved Manitoba has a contender that has been grossly overlooked? Meet the Hudson Bay Railway and the brave communities that dare step in its northbound path.

Shot in the summer of ’79, Muskeg Special opens with a group of elderly lads in The Pas; with jovial pride, they discuss their 50 years of punishing construction, birthing this legendary leviathan (from The Pas to Churchill, it covers a gruelling 821 kilometres). While “excellent interpersonal skills” looks better on a resumé, laying rail in an unforgiving, aggressive northern abyss cuts out the middleman and exposes the heart of a lifestyle that is so alien to baby boomers and generation Ys alike. A sensational film, it leaves you with a taste of toilsome sweat and a healthy regard for the idle — both inextricably linked in the communities that dance with the rail line.

Gregory Zbitnew, the film’s director, was only 24 when he shot this Manitoban epic. His amateur style, along with the limitations that go along with a tight budget and a crew of five (not to mention the technological infancy of the ’70s), unwittingly created a surreal journey way beyond the scope of anything Zbitnew intended. The finished product, however, was only recently completed. After 28 years, the film footage and audio could finally be digitized and edited with a fancy Mac.

The scenery is breathtaking and no effects can ever replace the honest perspective that the camera picks up as it is floats outside the window of the train, only to be interrupted occasionally by what sounds like a muffled, “Careful, eh?” No Canadian documentary would be complete without our cherished verbal tick. Save your money on speech therapy, “eh” simultaneously embodies all of the hardships and joys that the people in these Northern communities experience. It’s a call to compassion and a way to lighten the mood of a conversation, preventing extremes in emotion and ultimately defining the “polite” Canadian identity that is shrouded in controversy.

We encounter a diverse group of Manitobans as the film gives us a snapshot of each community on the Hudson Bay rail line (starting in The Pas and climaxing in Churchill). Countless people are interviewed and the crew stays out of the way; occasionally, you’ll hear the question faintly in background, but it’s never intrusive. Like any epic, we’re introduced to a mixed bag of nuts (in a good way), including: innocent children running alongside the train waving, a trapper showing off his elaborate bear-trapping systems, an aboriginal fisherman arguing with a conservation officer about the regulations placed on him by a heartless fish industry, and, my favourite, the toothless medicine man who claims to heal people with his hands (and various trees and roots).

The characters provide the socio-economic exploration at the heart of the film, especially in regards to the aboriginal people, as you see remnants of their past that refuse to submit. We witness the deleterious effects of modernization — an incompatibility of self-sustainability with the free market.

The crew slaughters the documentary ego, allowing nature and the people to speak for themselves. You’ll be absorbed by the film and lost in its silence; observation and experience become entangled in a mystifying web. There is no voice-over, and rarely a textual explanation of anything that is happening. Some gorgeous minimalist harmonica is peppered here and there by one jolly fellow, yet the wind through the indigenous trees is the real musical atmosphere, with the wildlife banter providing the atonal melodies. Returning power to the hands of nature (the rightful heir to existence), humanity is reduced to merely a part of a greater whole. For city-folk like us, it’s nearly impossible to imagine the strength of these people, to step into the unknown with nothing but an instinct to survive. If you’re not quite ready to abandon your possessions, risk your life and try it out yourself, this film is the next best thing.