North of Superior

I first saw this the year it, and the first IMAX theatre, opened at Ontario Place in 1971. I must have seen it 50 times since as I worked there in subsequent summers and would sneak out from the employee lounge under the seating to watch the audience's reaction when the picture blows up from a small window to the full screen and they suddenly find themselves tearing along just above the waters of a northern lake.

I just noticed that it has been a regular feature at the Cinesphere this past summer and I'd go and see it again if I wasn't stuck in Vancouver. :-(

If Windjammer was amazing in my childhood the penultimate teenage being there movie experience was North of Superior.

I will always remember the song ...Superior Country, rugged and free... so sang the trapper...

And I will never forget the three naked sirens sitting on a rock in a lake, that was a fine example of nature.

Ultimately, this is a travelogue of Ontario north of Lake Superior, a thinly populated area of enormous forests, ancient rocks and long, cold winters. An Ontario-themed Imax movie was needed for the opening of the new Ontario Place park in Toronto in 1971 (which featured the Cinesphere, the worlds first permanent Imax theatre), and North of Superior was the result. Despite being shot in the early seventies, most of the images within it are timeless, and could just as easily have been filmed in the same places today. Like most Imax films, it is shot to thrill the audience with images that convey the impression of motion as well as any medium I've ever seen. Some Imax films seem like just a collection of spectacular images meant to show off this effect and nothing more, but North of Superior (like the best of the Imax films) does much more than this. The motion effect is well used to get across the immensity and power of nature in the area (most particularly in the opening and closing scenes, as well as the forest fire sequence), but I think the film would still have an impact without the Imax motion effect. I would dearly love to have a DVD copy, in the unlikely event that such a thing were ever made available.

This wasn't the first Imax film I ever saw, but it had a profound impact on me from the first time I saw in in 1975. The only other Imax film that has ever come close in its impact is "The Dream is Alive" -- which had much more spectacular material to work with. In days past, when admission to the Cinesphere was free with your days admission to Ontario Place, my friends and I would watch this four or five times in a row if they would let us. I've never tired of the images it offers, perfectly complemented on the soundtrack by Bill Houston's "Ojibway Country", the words of which are a perfect fit for what's on the screen. If I wanted to give someone a quick introduction to what Northern Ontario is really like, or to convey how effective Imax can be as cinema, I don't think I could do it better than to have them see "North of Superior".

The Cinesphere at Ontario Place in Toronto is the world's original IMAX theatre. The film that showcased the IMAX process there for years was this one, North of Superior. Did people get tired of seeing it again and again? No way, not with its combination of earth and sky, forest fires and swooping light plane rides.

It was wonderful to have the natural splendour of the province celebrated in such a spectacular film. We weren't used to seeing our own country on the big screen. Nowadays, it's even harder to find something as thoroughly and recognizably Canadian as this up there.

We sailed across lake Ontario from Youngstown, NY to spend weekends at Ontario Place in the early '70s. My father took me to this film. I was probably around 9 the first time. I went back on my own several times every summer to see it. I can't really find words to say how it moved me, even formed me in some way. While superficially gorgeous, it is deeply cultural and I will never forget it; it is forever rooted in my psyche.