“500 Days In The Wild” is an independent documentary film project that follows filmmaker Dianne Whelan’s 6-year journey along the Trans Canada Trail’s 24,000 km of land and water trails, weaving together a total experience of adventure, personal reflections, and breathtaking wildlife and landscapes.
This journey began on July 1, 2015, in St. John’s NL and ended on August 1, 2021 in Victoria, BC. Although the Trans-Canada trail was built to celebrate 150 years of confederation under the government’s banner of “Strong, Proud and Free,” 500 Days in the Wild will present an alternate story, another vision of this country, its past and its future.
There are adventure scenes of paddling rapids, struggling in storms, escaping a bear attempting to destroy her camp in the High Arctic or the perils of being alone in a canoe on one of the biggest inland seas in the world. And there is of course humour—many good belly laughs about the absurdity of the situations she occasionally found herself in.
“It’s kind of funny when I think about it now. When I left I actually had a daily schedule—and by day 10 I had not even completed what I thought I could do in one day. So I lit a small fire and burned the schedule. And I stopped measuring my journey by how many kilometres I did in a day. I joke with people and tell them that’s the day I dropped the rabbit suit.”
Dianne Whelan
Award-winning director and cinematographer Dianne Whelan is the only person to complete this epic journey of discovery—hiking, biking, paddling, snowshoeing and skiing across the country.
For a woman in her 50s who is not an extreme athlete, it was sometimes gruelling, occasionally harrowing, often exhilarating and always surprising. She started out alone, disillusioned with the state of the world and worried about climate change, to look for different ways of caring for the land and each other. She ended the journey a bit wiser, more hopeful, in love and with a passion to share this story.
“It is a very humbling experience to be a fragile being alone on the vast waters of Lake Superior or deep in the woods on an old fur trader trail in Quebec. But then something ancient wakes up in your DNA, and you feel more connected to life than you ever have. You are not on the water paddling, you are with the water paddling…“
Dianne Whelan
Support Independent Filmmakers
500 Days in the Wild is an independent film. Independent art is important, because it gives voice to the human heart.
Canada’s Council for the Arts
Canada Council for the Arts, last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.
