A prehistoric landscape. Primitive shores that have seen more than a thousand shipwrecks. A region that is home to some of the oldest trees in eastern North America.
For its latest real-time travel documentary, TVOntario is “Tripping the Bruce.”
When it debuts April 15, viewers will take this trip aboard an 11-metre ketch hugging a 34-kilometre stretch across the northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula. The tour set sail last summer and eventually arrived in Tobermory before its final destination, Flowerpot Island.
The crew is no Gilligan and the Skipper. They are Randy Hines, an assistant dock master at Lion’s Head Marina, and retired Toronto police officer Dave Mansfield. “They’re really keen and great sailors, and know the waters,” said Mitch Azaria, executive producer.
Previous “Tripping” docs took viewers on a river ride aboard a vintage Great Lakes runabout (“The Rideau”) and airborne alongside a hawk (made possible by an aerial drone in “Niagara”). A sailboat works best for the Bruce, said Azaria, because there really is no other way to safely explore those rocky, primitive shores.
“None of the commercial boats are licensed to go across the entire northern peninsula because it’s that treacherous,” said Azaria. That becomes quickly apparent as cameras venture below the surface to explore some of the many shipwrecks — more than a thousand reported over the years on the waterways. The cold waters have helped to preserve the world’s largest collection of intact wooden shipwrecks.
The first wreck, the aptly named W.L. Wetmore, went down in a storm in November 1901. That all 27 men survived is one of the many “factoids” that pop up onscreen in what is otherwise a narrator-less experience.
The factoids are an important part of these “Tripping” docs, said John Ferri, TVO’s vice-president of programming and content. “We have an educational mandate … These factoids are very educational; they take you a lot deeper.”
As in Azaria’s other “Tripping” documentaries, animator Mathew Knegt renders high-definition recreations that are seamlessly woven into the journey. One illustrates the sudden storm that sank the Wetmore, which was towing two large barges of lumber when it left Parry Sound for Buffalo.
“We wanted to give viewers a sense of what these ships were like in their heyday, when they were under full sail, and to recreate what it was like when it was wrecked,” said Azaria.
Later in the doc, cameras dive below the surface and explore the Niagara II, a 55-metre decommissioned cargo ship sunk on purpose 22 years ago to create an active dive site as a tourist attraction.
Some of the shipwreck scenes are captured on tethered, underwater drones. Others were shot by scuba divers, including one by safety diver Kelly McGowan, who saved the day with an inexpensive, waterproof GoPro when a key drone malfunctioned.
Hugging the coastline by boat also allows for tremendous views of Ontario’s most dramatic Karst landscapes. The high, limestone cliffs have eroded over time into watery grottos and numerous bat caves. The region, dominated by some of the oldest trees in eastern North America, is also home to 150 species of migrating birds, a subspecies of black bear and massasauga rattle snakes.
These “Tripping” films have become an important franchise for the provincial public broadcaster.
“They’ve done extremely well for us,” Ferri said. The first one, “Tripping the Rideau Canal,” premiered over Easter weekend 2020, “the first big holiday weekend of the pandemic,” he recalled. That weekend it reached close to a million viewers and has since drawn 538,000 views on TVO’s YouTube channel.
“Obviously, it really resonated with viewers.”
Viewership for last year’s “Tripping the Niagara” was almost as robust and Ferri has commissioned more trips beyond “The Bruce.”
Azaria admits he was no expert on the Bruce Peninsula despite having “explored a lot of Canada.” As a filmmaker, he’s been responsible for more than 200 hours of factual entertainment for Good Earth Productions.
After “Tripping the Bruce” was suggested to him as a likely next project (by this writer, who has a cottage there), he grew curious about the region. Azaria scouted it and immediately saw the potential.
“You know the moment you get to Tobermory, and you see that water and you see how crystal clear it is, it might as well be the Caribbean.
“Then you’ve got the escarpment,” he continued, “these soaring cliffs coming down and sea stacks. We knew within 30 seconds this had to be our next episode.”
Azaria and company did their homework and are now experts on the region, which is the ancestral home of the Saugeen First Nation, an Ojibway First Nation with reserves on the peninsula.
Unlike “The Rideau” and “Niagara,” “The Bruce” isn’t just a TV staycation, it is likely to encourage real, in-person exploration. Tourists, in fact, are already tripping the Bruce. Even during the pandemic, in 2021, there were half a million visitors to the Bruce Peninsula National Park, part of the longest stretch of undeveloped land on the Niagara Escarpment.
As Azaria says, “It’s just such a beautiful, prehistoric landscape. What you get is the ability to see it and what you are seeing has been seen for a millennium.”
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