My attention was recently drawn to something missing from Canada’s fauna. I was rewatching the National Film Board’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes—
(record scratch)
Perhaps I should start a bit earlier.
Founded in 1939, the National Film Board of Canada is a public film and digital media producer and distributor. Even taking into account that it is eighty-seven years old, the NFB has been prolific, producing over 43,000 works since it was founded. That’s almost 500 works per year, covering a vast range of genres and subjects.
Some may wonder if, given the precepts of the beatified Hayek and Friedman, the NFB works could be any good. After all, they’re government products or at least financed by the government1. In fact, the NFB has produced a lot of solid work; Wikipedia says over five thousand works have won awards2.
It’s very likely that there’s some NFB work that will appeal to you. You can check for yourself: there are 18,000 or so NFB works in their online public archive. I’d recommend one of their more accessible works: The Sweater, The Cat Came Back, Log Driver’s Waltz, and of course, The Big Snit. Or any of the other works on this NFB blog list. Or you could just experiment with search terms in their search bar and see what turns up. With 18,000 possibilities, there has to be something you will like.
Among the many fine qualities of many NFB pieces is a nearly perfect combination of nostalgia value and short length perfect for dinner viewing. I am fine working my way through films fifteen minutes at a time, but I prefer something whose duration matches mealtime. Which gets us back to 1968’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes. Not only does it evoke fond childhood memories of the clatter of projectors and the heartening smell of burning celluloid as the film jammed, it’s sixteen minutes long. Perfect for my needs.
As you might guess from the title, the film is a short history of the Great Lakes since their formation, as encountered by a canoeist whose route takes him through time as well as space. At about 4:27, his path takes him into the most recent ice age, and he finds himself on top of a mile of ice. Shortly thereafter, he travels to the previous interglacial and plummets a mile down to the liquid phase water of the lake. At which point crocodiles, no doubt concerned for his well-being, rush out to greet him.
Canadia crocodiles in the Eemian? Aren’t Canadian crocodiles more of a Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum thing? Apparently not. As recently as 125,000 years ago, there were crocodiles in Canada. I just missed them!
This makes me sad. Crocodiles are archosaurs, distant cousins to ravens, hummingbirds, Canada Geese, and owls and—except for the various ravens, hummingbirds, Canada Geese, and owls that have tried to maim me—I generally get on well with those species. It stands to reason that all I need to do is confidently pat a crocodile on the head and I’d be their chum3.
However! Canada (and to a lesser extent the Eastern US) is home to a creature even more marvellous than a crocodile: the house hippo!
Sadly, if there is an NFB piece on the house hippo, I am unaware of it. There is, however, a 1999 Concerned Children’s Advertisers ad done in the style of Hinterland Who’s Who piece, which as you know were short informative videos produced by Environment Canada Wildlife Service and the National Film Board of Canada. I embed the relevant piece below:
Sadly, watching the ad to the end rather than jumping up and running to put out chips and peanut butter to attract lurking house hippos, I now see that the whole thing is a PSA warning people not to believe everything they see. That’s disappointing, but at least it permanently ended the threat of gullible people falling for doctored images and videos…
Or not, because there was a 2019 MediaSmarts sequel.
Ah, well. I can live in hope that some tech oligarch will be so taken with the idea of a mouse-sized version of a bad-tempered, extremely aggressive4, feces-spraying herbivore that they will pay genetic engineers to create them. Until then, I will be busily knitting cardigans for crocodiles while working my way through the NFB archive.
