Dianne Whelan said it took her a while to get used to filming herself on the world’s longest trail
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Time was everything for the filmmaker Diana Whelan when he decided to make a film about traveling the Trans Canada Trail.
At 24,000 kilometers, the route is the longest hiking route in the world. Whelan I hiked, biked, snowshoeed, skied, and paddled for almost 2,000 days. That trip is captured in his documentary. 500 days in nature. A successful festival last fall, the movie will be released in theaters and available on Paramount+ in Canada on March 1.
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The major venture made professional sense for the Sunshine Coast filmmaker, whose previous work included the Mount Everest films Base Camp (2012) and This Land (2009), which took viewers to the northernmost tip of Canada.
“I had been to the highest mountain and I have been to the northernmost coast. So from a professional perspective, making a movie about the world’s longest trail seemed like a natural fit,” Whelan said over Zoom from his home in Garden Bay.
With the professional box checked, Whelan also had some deep personal reasons for embarking on this adventure.
“The project came about at a time in my life when my marriage had ended and my 16-year-old dog had died,” Whelan said. “Then the life I had was over. And I really wanted to get away from the news, relationships, and money. And I needed to leave to enter simultaneously.”
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The trip began on July 1, 2015 in St. John’s and ended on August 1, 2021 in Victoria. She took a few breaks here and there when weather and logistics forced her to stay in one place for days at a time. On average, Whelan spent nine straight months on the move.
500 Days in the Wild is, at times, suspenseful, funny, and full of examples of good old-fashioned human common sense.
“I still have dreams where I wake up and slap myself,” Whelan said, when asked about being covered in bugs.
As for the most difficult part of the journey, Whelan paused briefly and said there are two types of difficulties: emotional and physical.
Emotionally, a big obstacle was being in the way when he found out his mother was sick. And then there was the fear that she arrived in the Arctic in 2019, when she and a friend of hers were rowing on the Mackenzie River. They discovered that, just ahead of them on the road, another traveler named Julien Gauthier was dragged out of his tent and beaten to death by a bear.
“That really changed the vibe of the trip. Suddenly, your biggest threat is your own psychological fear that you are fighting. That was the hardest thing psychologically,” Whelan said.
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As for the physical aspect, Whelan points to his trip on the Path of the Paddle, a water trail through northwestern Ontario that follows routes used for millennia by indigenous people.
“There were 168 transports,” Whelan said. “It was physically hard, but incredible. You’re out there like the travelers carrying your gear through the forest, through the middle of the continent. “It was probably the biggest physical challenge for me.”
Challenges aside, Whelan says he can’t pinpoint the best part of the trip. But he instead feels that it was the entire trip that was the rewarding part.
“I think the best part was the gift of experience,” Whelan said. “Frankly, what an incredible experience. I guess it was the classic midlife crisis. What a great thing it is to just walk, get away from a way of life.”
Whelan, a veteran documenter of other people’s experiences, agrees that it took some time to get used to focusing on herself. Even after 800 hours of footage, she still didn’t feel like the main protagonist of the story.
“They (the editors) said you’re like the central character here. I said no. I’m filming other people I meet on the road and they’re like, ‘Yeah, no,'” Whelan said. “To be honest, it’s terrifying. It’s very scary to put yourself as the subject of your movie. But, at the same time, I think he will also make me a better filmmaker.”
In the end, 500 Days in the Wild is not your typical human-nature adventure movie.
“It’s not really about conquering anything. It’s about connecting with something. Connecting with myself. Connecting to this physical and cultural world around me, so I think it’s really different that way,” Whelan said. “I’m 58 now, so I bring a different sensibility to the idea of adventure. The things I needed when I was twenty, I don’t need anymore.”
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