For the Sake of Water adventure documentary film screening set for the Fox Theatre in the Beach
By JESSICA SHACKLETON
This summer, Beacher Marc Frame went on a canoe trip across Algonquin Park, covering 160 kilometres in 10 days.
He and three friends made a nature adventure documentary called For the Sake of Water – Crossing Algonquin about the trip, and will be hosting the premiere screening of the film at the Fox Theatre on the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 14.
Frame spoke with Beach Metro Community News about the film ahead of the upcoming screening.
“(I’ve been) doing Algonquin trips my whole life, but this year, my buddies and I decided to see if we could cross the whole thing,” he said.
The idea to make the story of the crossing into a film came from combining Frame’s original music and his friend Oliver Prowse’s wildlife photography.
“He’s a really talented nature photographer, and wanted to show off his work, and I’m releasing music, so I wanted something to go with it, so the whole doc is scored by that,” said Frame. “A third reason is that my job is being taken by AI a bit, so I’m like, what next?”
Frame works in software, and recent changes got him thinking about the future. “If I could do what I wanted to do, what would I be doing?”
Frame, Prowse, and friends went into Algonquin Park before the summer travel season began.
“We chose an inopportune path at an inconvenient time. Most people, when crossing the park, choose a straight shot, but we chose something that made it more difficult than it probably needed to be,” he said.
“Also, we chose to do it early in the season for water levels and to be able to see as many baby animals as possible, but that was also peak bug season, which was pretty brutal but made for pretty good footage.”
Since they were on a less-travelled path at a less-travelled time, Frame said they saw one person on day one of the trip and didn’t see anyone else until day three, and from day five to nine, they didn’t see anyone. Because Algonquin Park is so vast, not running into others isn’t out of the realm of possibility, but it depends on where in the park you are.
“Largely, this doc was an attempt to make art and not content. If you’re trying to show off any form of art, you need to make ‘content’,” he said. “It was an attempt to be really authentic with the content that goes alongside my music and Oliver’s photography.”
Algonquin Provincial Park is Ontario’s oldest provincial park. Though it’s the third-largest Ontario park behind Polar Bear Provincial Park on Hudson Bay and Wabakimi Provincial Park near Thunder Bay, it’s one of the most famous and busiest. The park is 7,635 square kilometres of forests, bogs, lakes, and rivers; which is bigger in size than the province of Prince Edward Island.
Those looking for a typical car-camping experience are certainly welcome at the park, but the interior is only accessible by hiking or paddling. And that is what Frame and his friends did.
Frame’s group canoed 125 kilometres of lakes and rivers and portaged 35 kilometres while crossing the park west to east. They entered at Tim River and followed that to the inner lakes.
“We had three or four days of really long portages of about five kilometres every day. That took us through some of the most remote parts of the park that very few people go to just by virtue of how difficult it is to get to,” he said. “And then out through the east end, which is the Barron Canyon, it’s the most geologically interesting. Tons of cliffs; it’s really quite interesting around there.”
Portaging is carrying the canoe over one’s head while walking to the next body of water. Frame has been an avid canoeist since he was young, and has a lot of experience in both paddling and portaging.
“My dad got me into it when I was really young. I’ve been doing at least one or two canoe trips a year since I was very young,” he said.
You have to know what you’re doing to be successful on a long canoe trip, but Frame said he’s not trying to show that off in the film.
“There are enough YouTube videos to teach you how to do it. We actually tried to do the opposite. We wanted to show where it’s null and just us on our trip, doing goofy things and dumb things here and there. Ultimately, a big goal of it was authenticity,” he said.
One of the most famous Canadian stories to come out of Algonquin Park is the mysterious death of Canadian painter and Group of Seven member Tom Thomson, an experienced canoeist who was found dead in Canoe Lake in 1917. There are many theories as to what caused his demise. It’s a case Frame has done research on, and he’s inclined to believe that Thomson was accidentally killed during an argument over money.
However, there’s no mystery to solve with For the Sake of Water as it is a lighthearted, slice-of-life, coming-of-age documentary story.
“There are very slight undertones of ‘looking for something to do next,’ and I guess the moral of the story is that the only way to do it is to take it one step at a time. The imagery of one paddle after the next is really present with a trip like this,” said Frame.
When working on the film, he said the group was inspired by the 2025 documentary Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching, which follows two brothers who spend a year travelling across the United States to participate in Big Year birdwatching. A Big Year is when birdwatchers try to see as many bird species as possible in a calendar year.
“They did a really good job with it all,” said Frame of that documentary.
Those who wish to see For the Sake of Water can attend the local screening on Saturday, Nov. 14, at 2:30 p.m., at the Fox Theatre, 2236 Queen St. E., in the Beach. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and attendees are welcome to join Frame for an after-party at Outrigger just down the street.
Proceeds from the screening will support the group’s next documentary, whatever adventure that may be. Frame said they will use funds raised to buy camera and audio gear to improve quality and help the editing process. for their next project.
For more information on For the Sake of Water, please visit https://art.mframe.ca/
