Reel Beach: How will The Handmaid’s Tale end?

By BERNIE FLETCHER

Mother’s Day is over but motherhood is a recurring theme in the final season of the dystopian drama The Handmaid’s Tale which airs its last episode on May 27.

June (Elisabeth Moss) and Serena (Yvonne Strahovsky) are devoted to their children in very different ways. Serena wants to reform Gilead from within while June is a fierce fighter in the Mayday rebellion.

Will June rescue her daughter Hannah? Will the handmaids ever be free?

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Serena to June.

June and Serena are bitter foes but bond over love for their little ones. Before filming began Elisabeth Moss herself became a mother and had her baby with her on set while acting, directing and producing the series. Happy Mother’s Day!

This season began with June and Serena in Canada on a train full of refugees headed west.

June has an emotional reunion with her own mother. Serena jumps off the train with her child and miraculously finds her way to Canaan, a faith community of women. If this place looks familiar with its 19th century buildings and white picket fences, it’s because the filming location was the Village at Black Creek, also seen in Alias Grace and Anne with an E.

A living history museum, the Village has 40 historic buildings which you can visit during Doors Open Toronto on May 24 and 25, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

During Doors Open you can also tour the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant on Queen Street East, the site of many films, including Nightmare Alley (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.).

Sad to say, many fine buildings have been demolished in Toronto, but the Half Way House Inn was saved and moved to Black Creek in 1966. The tavern and hotel had welcomed travellers at the corner of Kingston Road and Midland Avenue in Scarborough.

The Half Way House was built in 1848 by Alexander Thompson and his wife Mary who was the great-granddaughter of Sarah Ashbridge. The inn sat in the middle of four plots of land owned by the Ashbridge family. It offered a resting place for stagecoach passengers and farmers making the long trip between Dunbarton, Pickering and Toronto.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
Mark Twain.

In the aftermath of a violent revolution a brave woman took her family on an arduous trek north to the shores of Lake Ontario. Widow Sarah Ashbridge (1739-1801) left Pennsylvania in 1793 and settled in York (Toronto) by the bay that now bears her family name.

Indigenous people had lived off their land for centuries, but the British Crown gave lots to those deemed Loyalists. The Ashbridges became a founding family of the east end.

“…you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Joni Mitchell.

The Handmaid’s Tale has won 15 Emmy Awards. The red cloaks and white bonnets have become worldwide symbols of protest against the taking away of women’s rights. The loss of any human rights diminishes us all.

Author Margaret Atwood studied history and writes that every oppressive event in her cautionary tale has happened in the past. Her story eerily reflects the border tensions and divisive era we now live in.

It was the excuse of fertility and motherhood that led to the creation of the theocracy of Gilead and the loss of freedom in an authoritarian state.

June and other handmaids fled north to Canada in a way reminiscent of slaves escaping on the Underground Railway with Harriet Tubman.

The red cloaks may still be with us. Atwood’s sequel The Testaments is now filming around Toronto until Aug. 29 with scenes at Scarborough Bluffs and Edwards Gardens.

Back in 2017 the first episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale showed the Church of St. Aidan’s on Queen Street East in the Beach as the Red Centre of indoctrination for handmaids. Atwood herself had a cameo in the pews at St. Aidan’s. She told Toronto Life: “I get to whack Elisabeth Moss over the head.”

Let’s all hope resilience and a sense of humour will get us through these uncertain times!

Elbows up Leafs, but don’t take any dumb penalties for slapping a Panther.

“Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
All About Eve.