My oldest daughter spent the weekend working away in the cellar at the workbench my husband made for her a couple of years ago. She came up this evening proudly holding a boat she had carved. I need to put up a picture of it here...it looks fantastic. The things that she is able to make astonish me.
She said she wanted to put it into the river that runs through our town so that it might eventually make it into the Mississippi and in the Gulf of Mexico. This poignantly reminded me of the film that all Canadians my age watched at least once in school....it is called Paddle to the Sea and it was produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1966, and was then shown to school kids every year for at least the next 20 years (they probably still are showing it every year, for all I know). The NFBC are the same great folks who produced The Sweater, The Big Snit, George and Rosemary, and The Cat Came Back...it is cool that the NFBC puts these short films online to view for free, and it is even cooler that the NFBC showed these short films in lieu of movie previews in movie theatres in Canada when they first came out.
I found Paddle to the Sea on Youtube, and I just finished watching it with my daughter, who was enthralled. You can find it too on YouTube in Part I, Part II, and Part III. Enjoy this little slice of Canadiana (and if you watch no other links of the ones I've given above, at least watch The Big Snit).
