Peter McCully: This is The PULSE Community Podcast. Welcome back. I'm Peter McCully. Thanksgiving weekend is almost here. The leaves are turning and falling, and it is getting darker earlier every evening.

Dave Graham: And I'm Dave Graham. I have an announcement to make. As of this week, I am officially in hibernation prep.

Peter McCully: Hibernation prep?

Dave Graham: Oh, yeah. Nature is a great teacher, and I'm learning from the bears, Peter. They have it all figured out. When it gets dark and cold, you eat everything you can find, settle into a nice cozy den, and check back in around March. I have the den, I have a blanket, and with Thanksgiving coming, I have a pretty solid food plan.

Peter McCully: Okay, but you're not a bear, Dave.

Dave Graham: All right, you may have a point there, but I have done some research, and I think I can make this work. Just have to sort out some logistics, and then I'm going to be set for some serious cocooning. Ooh, hey, maybe I need a cocoon. Let me see. I already have the freezer. Just have to stock it with the kind of goodies that'll help me stay insulated.

Peter McCully: Well, I'm sure your doctor would like to hear about this, but we need to move on. Today's podcast is brought to you in part by Tablet Pharmacy, with locations in Parksville, Qualicum Beach, and Nanaimo.

Dave Graham: Visit them online and check their prices at tabletpharmacy.ca.

Peter McCully: Award-winning swimmer Melanie Buggey grew up swimming with the Ravensong Breakers in Qualicum Beach and now lives in Nanoose Bay. This past summer, the 33-year-old marathon swimmer crossed the Strait of Georgia from Sechelt to Schooner Cove in record time.

Melanie Buggey: What I did do was, 'cause my biggest concern was hypothermia, I knew the only thing getting me out of the water was hypothermia. I thought, I need as much body fat as possible. I tried gaining weight the healthy way. It was not happening. And then I just said, to heck with it. Ben & Jerry's is gonna be my new best friend. Had a couple pints of those every day, and it did the trick.

Dave Graham: Thank you, Melanie. Just making some notes. Ben & Jerry's, two pints per day. See, Peter, a record-setting athlete using ice cream for insulation. I rest my case.

Peter McCully: Yes. And then she swam across the Strait of Georgia, Dave.

Dave Graham: Well, let's not get bogged down in details. Everyone's journey is different.

Peter McCully: Sam Wiebe is an award-winning, best-selling author. His new book is Shot in Vancouver: Adventures in Hollywood North. It's a genre-by-genre history of movies and TV shot in the province, from wartime propaganda filmed on Vancouver Island to the Emmy-sweeping hit Shōgun.

Sam Wiebe: I think the thesis is that BC filmmaking is a mess, but it's a beautiful mess. There's just so much more variety than anyone knows, and we should be proud of that. I think that there is this idea that saying something's shot in Vancouver or shot in BC is like a put down or it's less authentic, but these are all little images on a screen. None of it's authentic. So just enjoy it, find some sort of goodness in that, and just enjoy how messy and weird they are.

Dave Graham: On a future edition of the podcast, master gardener Deborah Garrod returns to the podcast to help with fall gardening. Oh, wait, I have some catching up to do. I still have a lot of summer gardening to take care of.

Peter McCully: And comedian and author Ron James is headed back to Vancouver Island. We'll chat with him on an upcoming podcast.

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Ian Lindsay & Associates: Ian Lindsay of Lindsay & Associates has played an active role in the local community since 1979. He has been with RE/MAX, Vancouver Island's most advanced real estate business network, since 1996, marketing and selling residential, rural, strata, recreational, investment, and project development real estate. Ian has received several awards recognizing his exceptional community commitment locally, as well as awards for outstanding performance and achievement from both RE/MAX International and the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board. You'll find true real estate professionals at ianlindsay.ca.

Peter McCully: We have another contest on the go. You could win a $100 Thrifty Foods Smile card.

Dave Graham: To enter to win, fill out the form at the contest link and tell us your go-to budget meal.

Peter McCully: And with Thanksgiving coming up, this is a great time to share a tip on stretching that grocery budget.

Dave Graham: Oh, I have a good tip. Buy ice cream in the biggest container you can find. That will lower your cost per serving. Can't argue with math.

Peter McCully: Well, I wouldn't dare try to argue with that, Dave. Let's get to our first guest. Here's Marilyn.

Marilyn: Award-winning swimmer Melanie Buggey grew up swimming with the Ravensong Breakers in Qualicum Beach and now lives in Nanoose Bay. This past summer, the 33-year-old marathon swimmer crossed the Strait of Georgia from Sechelt to Schooner Cove in record time. Today, she joins us to share the story.

Dave Graham: Melanie, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to meet you. I can't wait to hear your story.

Melanie Buggey: And it's a pleasure to meet you, too.

Dave Graham: I just want to start actually from whether or not there was a moment in your life when you realized that perhaps your relationship with water might be a little unusual.

Melanie Buggey: Probably in the womb. I think I've always been very obsessed with water since I was procreated.

Dave Graham: It's been forever. There's no realization. That's your normal.

Melanie Buggey: No, it's definitely standard for me. I don't think there was ever a eureka moment. It's just always has been.

Dave Graham: So in high school, we can go back that far, you were swimming competitively and then stepped away for a while for college. And how was college anyway?

Melanie Buggey: Soul destroying as you do. You know, I got through. For some reason, I just kept going back and collecting more degrees because apparently I love self-loathing. Wow.

Dave Graham: If I may ask, what did you study?

Melanie Buggey: Bachelor in kinesiology, and then I did a master's in primatology. I was gonna be the next Jane Goodall, was my big plan. COVID hit, and I did some creative writing for another master's. That was what I refer to as my bored COVID degree.

Dave Graham: And it was at that time, I understand, that you returned to the pool. Is there a connection between a pandemic and swimming?

Melanie Buggey: No. I was living abroad since 2016, since I got my master's. So in my mind, I was gonna go live in the jungles of Africa, be a mad scientist, and I didn't really have the intention of going back to Canada. So pandemic hit, I came back to Canada to ride it out for what I thought would be two or three months, and I'm pretty well still here.

Dave Graham: You competed at the masters level internationally, including Singapore, Japan, a Pan American medal in Trinidad and Tobago. Some lovely spots to visit. Did you get a chance to actually see, or was it just there to swim and go?

Melanie Buggey: I probably travelled an irresponsible amount there instead of training. The schedule's very weird at the world championships. They have an open water swim at mid to late July, and then the pool swim doesn't start until mid-August. So I would naturally do my ocean swim, and then I'm gonna go for an adventure for two or three weeks with zero training, and then jump in the pool and pretend I'm in shape.

Dave Graham: Oh, to be young again. For an event like the Pan American Games, what's the training regimen like for you?

Melanie Buggey: For me, I swam five days a week and had every intention of going to the gym and getting core strength and upper body strength, which naturally I didn't. So just swimming. That's genuinely it.

Dave Graham: What was the moment where you thought, "Gosh darn it, I'm gonna swim the strait"?

Melanie Buggey: I think I've always wanted to do big swims like that, but I think I solidified the gosh darn it, I'm gonna do it, in Singapore. I did that open water 3K, and then I did all my traveling and whatnot after, before my irresponsible pool swims. I remember I had basically taken a year off swimming 'cause I worked in Europe for a few months, and I got wrecked in that 3K. I was exhausted. But I remember thinking, "Yeah, I was really slow, but I could keep going. So why the heck don't I just do these big swims? Because I don't really feel like I would drown, so let's give it a go."

Dave Graham: You said this idea for the swim traces back to a childhood memory, being bored on a ferry. Care to explain?

Melanie Buggey: I think everyone's probably experienced being incredibly bored on the ferry. I just remember as a child I wanted to jump in and go swimming, and the person I was with said, "Don't do that. You will die." And I just remember having in the back of my mind, "You're gonna die if you do that swim." Like I said, I keep trying to kill myself and drown myself, but I guess a spiteful little part of me just wanted to prove that person wrong.

Dave Graham: I have no issue swimming, but the thought of cold, deep water does somehow get to me, and I think there are a lot of people that think the last thing they wanna do is jump off a boat in the middle of a strait.

Melanie Buggey: Nobody's accused me of being sane.

Dave Graham: So for this accomplishment, what was the training like for that?

Melanie Buggey: Started very strong, I would say. I swim with the Masters swim team in Nanaimo. I just showed up at the pool maybe an hour or so early before every practice and got an extra three or four kilometers in, and that lasted until summer. And then the swim season ended, and my training became irresponsible, and just eating, I'd be lucky to get 5K a week. It was pathetic. Yeah.

Dave Graham: From my little knowledge in this kind of thing, I would have thought there would be a particular attention to packing in the protein and the calories and this and that through every day. Do you work with a dietician at all? Have you?

Melanie Buggey: No. Again, I'm not very responsible. What I did do was, 'cause my biggest concern was hypothermia, I knew the only thing getting me out of the water was hypothermia. I thought, "I need as much body fat as possible." I tried gaining weight the healthy way. It was not happening. And then I just said, "To heck with it. Ben & Jerry's is gonna be my new best friend." Had a couple pints of those every day, and it did the trick.

Dave Graham: So you lead us nicely to the next question, which is dealing with the hypothermia. No wetsuit is allowed for the swim to count officially. How did that impact you in your swim?

Melanie Buggey: I originally wanted to swim late July, and I was expecting the water to be about 14 degrees, hence my attempt to gain as much weight as humanly possible. It got postponed for a variety of reasons. By the time I got in the water, it was in the low 20s, so I basically got fat for nothing.

Dave Graham: Huh. You had projected this swim to take at least 12 hours. You finished in 8 hours, 42 minutes. And where does that land in the records?

Melanie Buggey: I really wasn't going for a record, but happened to get one by the looks of it. I know the fastest ever female was 11 hours, 20 minutes, and then the fastest male was 9 hours, 20 minutes. I guess I'm the fastest human. Oops.

Dave Graham: Holy cow. Did you realize soon after the start of the swim that you were gonna just blast your time to smithereens?

Melanie Buggey: I think when I was estimating 12 hours, I just looked at my pool times and added an atrocious amount, thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna be way slower in the ocean." And I was, but not as slow as I predicted.

Dave Graham: A difference, as you mentioned, the last record for a female, 11 hour something. That's roughly three hours. That's phenomenal.

Melanie Buggey: It's okay.

Dave Graham: I'm just trying to wrap my head around such a significant difference between one person's best effort and you after pints of ice cream. Were you absolutely exhausted throughout the thing? At the end of it, how were you left feeling?

Melanie Buggey: I think I felt like I could have turned around and done it again, but I think I would have wanted to kill myself. But I think it was doable.

Dave Graham: So when you get to Schooner Cove, that's your landing spot, what did it feel like to get your feet back on earth?

Melanie Buggey: I didn't really know how to stand for a moment. My feet didn't really know what dry land felt like, so I definitely wiped out into barnacles. There was a lot of blood on my hands.

Dave Graham: As you're going through, you obviously realize that you're setting a record.

Melanie Buggey: Yeah, I think I had some excitement. It's also kind of hard to feel smug in a sense of, "Ooh, I'm the fastest," because in the ocean, no two swims are ever the same. I might have had way faster currents than other people. I might not. There's no way of knowing. I don't know what their swims were. I don't know if they had good currents. I don't know if they had to fight wind conditions, waves. So if it's in the pool, I think there's room for kind of smugness and superiority when you win there, but in the ocean I think it's just such a different game.

Dave Graham: That's a great perspective. What about the support crew? What kind of role did they play?

Melanie Buggey: Scream at me every time I went the wrong way. So they were probably more exhausted than I was by the end of it, 'cause I have no sense of direction. They also fed me every half hour, just gels and Gatorade and whatnot, just to keep my blood sugar up so I could keep going. But yeah, I don't think I could have done it without them.

Dave Graham: Was there a reason to fear any life in the ocean that might threaten your trip or a leg or something?

Melanie Buggey: I don't think I was particularly worried about anything. I think I was a little concerned that maybe jellyfish might make an appearance at some point. I know the lion's mane has a reputation for being rather vicious, so I didn't think it was ever gonna make me stop my swim if I came into contact with any of those, but I knew it was gonna be very unfortunate. Apparently, I did actually come very close. My boat captain told me after the fact. He said, "There was one really close to you." I'm like, "Oh."

Dave Graham: So now you're training for the 2027 World Aquatics Masters Championships in Budapest. You've talked about attempting the English Channel.

Melanie Buggey: As far as English Channel goes, it's something I have in the back of my mind I'd love to do at some point, but the price tag is oh my God. I think it's about $10,000 just for the escort boat and everything, and do I wanna swim across a body of water or get a down payment for a house kinda thing?

Dave Graham: Can you get sponsors for that kind of thing?

Melanie Buggey: I hate asking for money. It's really awkward. I tried doing a little fundraiser. I felt so awkward the whole time asking people for money.

Dave Graham: Final question for someone who might be thinking about taking up swimming in whatever form. Any advice?

Melanie Buggey: It's gonna sound cliche, but just do it. I know for me, in October, the furthest distance I'd ever swum in my life was five kilometers in one go without stopping. By November, I was doing 10. I just kept going with it, and it's crazy how fast you do progress, I think, when you actually are consistent.

Dave Graham: I lied. This is the final question. Okay. Where does the motivation to do all this come from, or is it just pure fun? What is it?

Melanie Buggey: I don't know. My motivation, I think I've probably always had some sick and twisted desire to be the best in some way. I don't know. It's like, do I wanna be the jack of all trades, master of none versus do I wanna be the best? I think I'm doing the more jack of all trades route right now. I accidentally was the best, but I'm definitely trying to expand my horizons with things. So I don't necessarily see myself as an open water swimmer in a sense, but it's one of my hats.

Peter McCully: Melanie Buggey, from the Ravensong Breakers pool in Qualicum Beach to a record-setting swim across the Strait of Georgia. Cold water, open ocean, and the whole plan built around keeping hypothermia at bay with a little help from Ben & Jerry's.

Dave Graham: I just wanna point out that Melanie and I have pretty much the same training program right up to the part about ice cream. After that, our plans diverge.

Peter McCully: You mean when she gets in the ocean and you get on the couch?

Dave Graham: I'll admit, it's a key difference, but I'm very pleased to know that my training is otherwise practically the same as a world-class athlete's. Okay, before we get to our next guest, I wanna mention that you can access Vancouver Island webcam links through our website, as well as links to other Vancouver Island podcasts. Begin your explorations at thepulsecommunity.ca.

Peter McCully: You can also find us on Apple, Amazon, iHeart, Spotify, TikTok, and YouTube. We're also on Facebook and Instagram.

Dave Graham: We would be most interested in any tips on stories you might wish to share. You can reach us and leave a voice or a text message. Head to our website, click on the contact link. You'll find us at thepulsecommunity.ca.

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Peter McCully: Our next guest has watched a lot of movies shot right here in BC, and he's got a theory about why we should love them, flaws and all.

Dave Graham: Well, I'll take the opportunity now to recommend a movie filmed in Vancouver I just saw recently, Backrooms. It's a wild adventure in psychological horror, although now I'm kind of frightened of furniture stores. That won't make any sense unless you've seen the movie. Here's Marilyn.

Marilyn: Sam Wiebe is an award-winning, best-selling author. His new book is Shot in Vancouver: Adventures in Hollywood North. It is a genre-by-genre history of movies and TV shot in this province, from wartime propaganda filmed on Vancouver Island to the Emmy-sweeping hit Shōgun.

Peter McCully: Welcome back to the podcast today, Sam.

Sam Wiebe: Happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Peter McCully: You're known mainly as a crime novelist, most notably, in my opinion, for the Wakeland series. What made you want to spend literally years writing a nonfiction history of movies and TV that was shot in the province?

Sam Wiebe: There really wasn't this kind of book. It's really a case of I always wanted a book that would list the different movies and TV shows shot here, and there's some great scholarship, but often it either looks at only independent Canadian cinema, or it looks at well-known TV shows like The X-Files and Supernatural. But I kinda wanted something that would cover it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Peter McCully: Now, in the introduction, you coined the phrase Shot in Vancouver Syndrome, so perhaps you could explain to our listeners exactly what that means.

Sam Wiebe: It's this feeling when you're watching a TV show or a movie and you recognize landmarks from not just Vancouver, but BC in general, and they're usually presented as part of Seattle or San Francisco or Riverdale. It's this feeling of nostalgia, embarrassment, pride, bafflement, wonder, all of those kinds of feelings, and it's just an odd thing that I think only people from here feel because BC is one of the three biggest film centres in North America. LA is usually LA. New York is usually New York. But BC's never BC.

Peter McCully: What I liked about the book was you made it easy for me. You broke down the book into genres. There's action, comedy, drama, horror, indie, and my favourite, sci-fi. Was there one genre that surprised you with stories more than the others when you were doing your research?

Sam Wiebe: I organized it that way because I was really trying not to write something that would be academic. I didn't wanna write a smart person's book. I wanted this to be fun. I grew up going to video stores. That was my film education, is going to the MegaMovies on Oak Street, and later Blockbuster and all that kind of stuff. And of course, they were organized by genre. I would say that sci-fi really shocked me, 'cause I am not a big sci-fi guy. The more I got into it, the more you realize how deep that bench goes and how important it is as a financial engine. The second that The X-Files left, there was this sort of lull, and then when Stargate kicked up, it kind of saved and reinvigorated the BC film industry. And then with Supernatural after that. It's this huge part of who we are. And of course, the superhero shows play into that, too. But it's really important, and everybody does their time on those, so you see all the same actors, and yeah, that was really interesting.

Peter McCully: We had Grayston Holt on the podcast just a short time ago. He's starring in the cast of Neagley now, a follow-up to Reacher. And that's exactly what he said. He said, "Everybody does their time in sci-fi in British Columbia."

Sam Wiebe: Yeah, I think it's true.

Peter McCully: I thought it might be fun to go through the book and find some references to Vancouver Island, whether that be actors, locations, that kind of thing.

Sam Wiebe: All right. I will do my best. I do not have the book in front of me, but you can quiz me. Go ahead.

Peter McCully: Hatley Castle at Royal Roads in Victoria shows up everywhere. It might be the single most reused building for filming on Vancouver Island. Could you tell us about some of the movies that it shows up in?

Sam Wiebe: It's most famous as the X Mansion, the Charles Xavier school for gifted youngsters in the X-Men and the Deadpool movies. So even when it's not one of the locations, there's often a quick cutaway shot of it in movies, like the third Deadpool. One of the most interesting movies that was shot there was The Changeling, the horror movie in the '80s. I think if you have to look at the most important movies in BC film history, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a big one, the Robert Altman movie, but The Changeling really set the tone for the kind of movies that got shot here. It's a really good ghost story. It stars George C. Scott. Hatley Castle shows up at the very end as the evil senator's family home. There are great stories about the filming of that, with George C. Scott kind of staying in his trailer and walking around in a robe all day. And Melvyn Douglas, who was this great actor, I think The Changeling was one of the last films he ever did. He had his biggest scenes there, and the director closed the set down so that the two of them would have more privacy. But the director of Royal Roads University shows up as the butler in the scene. So they just gave him a costume and marched him in. It's a very cute movie. Just a great location

Peter McCully: And what is it about the building that keeps directors coming back?

Sam Wiebe: It doesn't look North American, and I think that's why people keep coming back to it. MacGyver shot there and used it as a British castle. It's been used as every evil family mansion, or a, a private school. So it's very unique, and it's got all sorts of really cool gardens around it. So it's just a very distinct and non-North American-looking location.

Peter McCully: Sam, tell me what drew a Hollywood war picture all the way to Vancouver Island to film during the Second World War. Your book says they built a set out where the Victoria Airport now is.

Sam Wiebe: So for Commandos Strike at Dawn, which was this propaganda picture, like an action war film, but actually documenting a real story of the Scandinavian resistance to Hitler. So they built this little village outside of Victoria. For the war scene, they actually used soldiers stationed at Esquimalt base. And a lot of the Navy warships that you can see were literally on their way over to Europe and participated in D-Day. Very cool locations in that.

Peter McCully: I understand one of the actors in that film caused a bit of a stir walking through the lobby of the Empress one day.

Sam Wiebe: Yes. They were staying in the Empress. And of course, a lot of the locals were cast as the good guys, but some were cast as the Nazis. So you can imagine soldiers walking through there in German Army outfits. Not exactly something you'd be happy to see while you're having high tea at the Empress.

Peter McCully: For those of us who are of a certain vintage, we would remember the movie Bird on a Wire, starring Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson. Victoria stood in for Racine, Wisconsin?

Sam Wiebe: So this is a very interesting film. It's more interesting from the industry standpoint than how great it is as a film. It's like an Alfred Hitchcock-style couple on the run movie. So they cover half of North America, which means that Vancouver stands in for Detroit, and Victoria plays Racine, Wisconsin. And I think there's a little bit in the, Victoria's Chinatown, too. And then they used a few areas outside of the cities as the Midwest. The final scene takes place in some sort of creepy zoo, which I think was built on a sound stage and used more animals than Noah had. Just this incredibly expensive set. But it's just a really interesting example of how far you can stretch BC as a location.

Peter McCully: So what makes a city like Victoria convincing as small town America?

Sam Wiebe: In Victoria's case, it has different neighbourhoods that can be repurposed. So there's actually a Western called Harry Tracy, Desperado, where parts of Victoria were dressed up as 1800s, like a Western town. You have the part with the cobblestones. You have Chinatown and Fan Tan Alley. It allows for a lot of diversity within a small area

Peter McCully: This was a really big surprise for me when I read it in your book. Tell us about the 1982 Western that starred Gordon Lightfoot as a marshal.

Sam Wiebe: That's Harry Tracy, Desperado, which I mentioned. I would love to say that this is a classic Western. It's got a couple of moments. It's got a great performance by Bruce Dern as the last surviving member of the Wild Bunch, the gang of outlaws. And Gordon Lightfoot plays the marshal on his trail. There's a scene where Gordon Lightfoot gets buried in what's supposed to be an outhouse hole, and boy, does he not look happy shooting that.

Peter McCully: I can imagine. Even Godzilla used Nanaimo and Victoria to double for a pair of California railway stations.

Sam Wiebe: And New Westminster also. It's incredible what they can do with layering CGI and backgrounds. A film like Godzilla, like the 2014 one, where it's supposed to be all across North America in these big marquee cities like San Francisco, Tokyo. They accomplish that mostly in BC, and they might use a big establishing shot of the San Francisco skyline. And then it'll get close, and you'll be like, "Oh, that's down the street from me."

Peter McCully: Ucluelet is one of my favourite spots. I worked at the newspaper there for a number of years. And that rocky shoreline played the coast of feudal Japan in Shōgun, which went on to win 18 Emmys not that long ago. What does a real coastline like that bring to a production that they just can't do with CGI or a studio backlot?

Sam Wiebe: I am an old man now. So when I look at things and they are purely CGI, my eyes immediately shut off part of my suspension of disbelief, and I just don't enjoy it. So even something that's really well-made, like the Avatar movies, I'd rather watch a Looney Tunes cartoon. So when you watch something like Shōgun and you have the actual actors, their scenes take place on this shoreline. I think in the pilot, there's a scene where they haul someone up from the beach. It looks authentically like Japan. There are really unspoiled parts of BC, which is a huge draw for historical shows like that. They also built one of the feudal cities in Port Moody. So we have this amazing geography and then the talent and the skill to recreate the actual cities as well.

Peter McCully: So Tofino and Ucluelet are pretty popular with filmmakers. What films will we recognize, and what keeps pulling filmmakers back to that stretch of coast?

Sam Wiebe: It's gorgeous, and the surf is especially wild and rocky. So I think that's a huge draw. And I would love to write a mystery show that took place there 'cause I just really enjoy those communities. But that whole stretch has been in use since the '70s. So yeah, it's quite popular.

Peter McCully: What films will we recognize?

Sam Wiebe: Man of Steel has a scene that takes place there, and Lou with Allison Janney. But one of the interesting ones, there's a film from the '70s called The Groundstar Conspiracy, and it's almost all set around SFU, which the SFU Burnaby campus always plays this mad scientist lab government agency where people disappear and all that kind of stuff. But there's a scene where the couple are on the run. The lighthouse in Ucluelet shows up, and there's a scene on the beach. And I almost couldn't believe it because it's the 1970s. It's before much was shot there. But even back then, it was on the map for really interesting locations, and that lighthouse has definitely showed up in other stuff, too.

Peter McCully: We had Chelah Horsdal as a guest on the podcast in season two, and she was telling us that she was a member of the cast for War for the Planet of the Apes. A lot of that was shot up around the Tofino/Ucluelet area as well. Even Jack Nicholson filmed on Vancouver Island, yes?

Sam Wiebe: So part of Five Easy Pieces, which is one of the new Hollywood films from the '60s, was filmed on Vancouver Island. Not to spoil this movie that's over 70 years old, but at the end, he runs away from his fiancée at a gas station, and the gas station is still there. That location is still this sort of truck stop. So every time I drive up island, I go past it.

Peter McCully: For the movie Insomnia, the director Christopher Nolan brought some guy named Al Pacino and Robin Williams to Port Alberni. The director said that the town had great architecture and a different feel from anywhere else. Did anyone from that shoot share a memory of Robin Williams while he was in town?

Sam Wiebe: I have never heard a bad Robin Williams story, and he shot several movies of varying degrees of quality in BC. Apparently, the people in Port Alberni loved him, and he really enjoyed his time there, too. It's a really interesting use of that city because it does have different architecture than Squamish, which is where the rest of Insomnia was shot.

Peter McCully: It's funny. The first time I drove into Port Alberni, me being from Nova Scotia originally, this could be any mill town in Nova Scotia. Just has that look

Sam Wiebe: Yes, exactly.

Peter McCully: Now, a Victoria-raised stuntman you write about in your book, named Ken Kirzinger, doubled for Al Pacino. Did you come across many stories like that where a local stunt performer ends up in a movie?

Sam Wiebe: Oh, absolutely. One of the people that I interviewed for the book was Paul Lazenby, who's a stuntman and stunt actor who, I think his earliest movies were doubling for Stone Cold Steve Austin. Paul's a former wrestler, so it's fitting that he gets to double for the most famous wrestler in his early action movies. And now when I see Paul show up, he's a Russian guard in one of the Mission Impossible movies, and he starred in a couple of cool little fantasy movies and things like that. It's always nice to see a local face in that.

Peter McCully: Brendan Fletcher grew up in the Courtenay-Comox area, and he's credited that community with helping him avoid a lot of the pitfalls that child actors run into. Do you think growing up away from the industry actually helped him in that regard?

Sam Wiebe: It's really interesting because I think staying away from the celebrity side and the side that kisses your posterior and provides you with illicit substances and stuff is probably really difficult to deal with. But the industry itself is pretty healthy. There's a really tight-knit community of film professionals. Even going back to The Beachcombers. One of the cameramen on The Beachcombers is now the guy who shoots Game of Thrones and all these big HBO TV shows. So there is the really unhealthy side to it, and I'm glad that he's able to stay away from it, but I wouldn't want to tar the actual industry people with that.

Peter McCully: Now a new old series called Private Eyes West Coast is set to debut, and it's set in Victoria. One of its writers called it the most Victoria show ever made.

Sam Wiebe: He confided that was the goal with the show, that the showrunners had spent time there in the past, and they really wanted to use that as a character.

Peter McCully: So Private Eyes West Coast, do you think we're finally past the era where BC always had to pretend to be somewhere else?

Sam Wiebe: It's a tough one because as I argue in the book, BC has always been in thrall to these two different film cultures, and one of them is Hollywood's, and that's really apparent. We all know when we watch X-Files that it's not playing Vancouver, or it's not playing Victoria or other parts of BC. But there are a lot of shows that come out of the Toronto-based Canadian film world, and they will use Vancouver specifically in a way that to me is not very authentic to Vancouver or BC. Hopefully, Private Eyes avoids that. This is also the gripe of a bitter fiction writer who's always gonna look at something that's less authentic and be like, "Oh, why didn't you do this?" Which is why shows like Da Vinci's Inquest and Cold Squad still resonate so much with us.

Peter McCully: I wanted to go back to something you said. You mentioned The Beachcombers, and in the book you point out how much of the history, the decades of CBC programming simply is not available to watch anymore. Why is that?

Sam Wiebe: The short answer is they don't want it available. It's expensive to license or re-license the music for a lot of things. So there are CBC movies of the week where they licensed Courtney Love and Hole or Tom Waits or really great music that's only gone up in esteem over the last 30 years, and it would be expensive. But also there's a case where they don't wanna pay the performers because they have royalty agreements, and they'd have to re-litigate all of that. But I think it's a crime that all of these things are not available. They're part of our cinematic history for good or ill. In researching this, I tried to get some things from the CBC, and they were gonna charge like $300 an episode just to send me a screener copy. I joke in the afterword that there are Russian pirate sites that have more Canadian content than CBC Gem, which is a slight exaggeration, but in terms of the historical stuff, it's not far off.

Peter McCully: But you would think that even licensing under today's prices versus reshooting a new show, you'd be much better off to relicense the old shows and find a new audience.

Sam Wiebe: Yeah. Something like The Beachcombers, that was a little before my time, but I went up to Gibsons a couple weeks ago, and on the ferry, people are still talking about it. That show still has a pull, and it still has an audience. I know the fact that it had one of the first indigenous characters, played by Pat John, that's still huge, and had the show played on APTN. I think this stuff should be available for everybody, and I would love it if one of the results of the book is to renew interest and maybe just get some sort of archive where we can go and screen these. I'm not trying to break any copyright rules, but as CBC owns these things and the people own the CBC, therefore, we should have access to it and be able to watch them.

Peter McCully: Hear, hear. How about a speed round of questions, Sam?

Sam Wiebe: Okay.

Peter McCully: Switching off the island for a second, what Vancouver University shows up as a secret genetics lab in The Fly and an evil lab in Underworld Awakening?

Sam Wiebe: It's The Fly II, and that's Simon Fraser University, and you are talking to a proud alumnus. And they were actually filming Underworld Awakening the year I was graduated

Peter McCully: What two BC landmarks did you mention that we've lost recently?

Sam Wiebe: Hastings Park Race Course is going to be torn down and turned into a stadium, and the 2400 Motor Court on Kingsway. They've just scheduled that to be redeveloped too.

Peter McCully: What is the first feature length film made in BC?

Sam Wiebe: This is difficult to say, but In the Land of the Head Hunters is probably the closest that I could find in terms of an actual feature film that was shot here.

Peter McCully: What year was that?

Sam Wiebe: 1914.

Peter McCully: Wow. So Sam, In the Land of the Head Hunters being 1914 was probably a silent movie. What was the first talking picture ever made in BC?

Sam Wiebe: This would have been The Crimson Paradise or one of those quota quickie movies shot at Willows Park Studios in Victoria. Which was a very cheap studio that was built by Kenneth Bishop. And basically took advantage of this quota system in the UK where a certain amount of the movies they showed in theatres had to be shot in the Commonwealth. So of course, people just went up from Hollywood, plopped down on a little tract of Canadian soil, and cranked out as many movies as they could and tried to take advantage of that. And most of these are horrible. There's one called Secrets of Chinatown, which is shot in Victoria's Chinatown, is set in Vancouver's Chinatown, involves no Chinese people whatsoever, and the main character is a white man dressed in brown face pretending to be a mystic. Not just one of the most racist movies, but just one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen. So proud BC history. There's some very weird things in the book that I've found.

Peter McCully: I understand there was a bunch of kids on one of the Gulf Islands that got a week off school to appear as extras in The Lotus Eaters in 1993. What island was that?

Sam Wiebe: That was Galiano.

Peter McCully: And they had a film school there for many years as well.

Sam Wiebe: So I've been told.

Peter McCully: I read that the 1945 movie Son of Lassie was filmed in BC. What was the filming location?

Sam Wiebe: I believe it was on the island, but this is with, I think, Peter Lawford, who went on to be part of the Rat Pack. It was another one of those cheap propaganda movies that came out just after or around World War II. I was trying to track down what the first sequel was because there's a chapter in the book about all of the very crappy sequels that have been shot in BC. So I think that was one of the first ones.

Peter McCully: If we go back to your assessment of the Chinatown movie, what about the toxic waste-spewing mill in a horror movie that I think was made around 1979, The Prophecy?

Sam Wiebe: Prophecy, yes. So this is a movie where there was a lot of anticipation over the monster. And when the monster is revealed as this mutated bear that has been living in mercury-tainted water from the mill, it's supposed to be set in Maine, but no pulp mill in the States would allow them to film there because they thought it would be bad propaganda. They found one in BC that was happy to take their money and they shot there.

Peter McCully: Well, if somebody reads the book, Sam, and only takes away one thing about how movies and television actually get made in British Columbia, what would you like that to be?

Sam Wiebe: There's an idea that either things are just crappy and made for a dollar or that they're made as independent works of auteur genius. And my thesis is that it's all mixed up. There's always mixed motives. On the worst movies, there are people who are going in there and working as craftspeople and doing really great work. On all of the really great well-known movies, there are some really interesting messy stories behind the scene. Yeah, I think the thesis is that BC filmmaking is a mess, but it's a beautiful mess. There's just so much more variety than anyone knows. And we should be proud of that. I think that there is this idea that saying something's shot in Vancouver or shot in BC is like a put-down or it's less authentic, but these are all little images on a screen. None of it's authentic. So just enjoy it. Find some sort of goodness in that and just enjoy how messy and weird they are.

Dave Graham: Sam Wiebe, Shot in Vancouver: Adventures in Hollywood North celebrates the big, beautiful mess that is filmmaking in BC. And Sam makes a pretty good case that we should be proud of every weird and wonderful frame of it. You'll find links to Sam's book in our story notes.

Peter McCully: And you'll find more stories at thepulsecommunity.ca with our Skookum Kid's Stories featuring Captain Dave and the crew of the Mellow Submarine, and Peter & Gracie, the Eskimo Dog.

Dave Graham: In this week's episode of Peter & Gracie, Peter's First Swim Lesson. And don't forget, we have colouring pages to go along with each new story.

Peter McCully: Our Radio Archaeology series brings back classic radio series from a time when radio was king. Be listening for original episodes of Dragnet, featuring Sergeant Joe Friday, and Gunsmoke with Marshal Matt Dillon.

Dave Graham: Another component of our PULSE Community Podcast is a program by Cindy Thompson of Parksville called A Resilience Project. We invite you to tune in to hear Cindy share insights and life lessons learned at sea, combined with over 30 years of supporting clients as they navigate their own journeys.

Peter McCully: And Erin Haluschak and Chef Jonathan Frazier of the Comox Valley return with another season of F3: Football, Food & Fantasy.

Dave Graham: You'll find these podcasts and more at thepulsecommunity.ca. And while you're there, please sign up for our weekly newsletter. It'll keep you up to date on the latest podcast guests and contests. And here we go. Ready to wrap up another episode.

Peter McCully: Yep. That's all the time we have for this week. Thank you for joining us. We wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving.

Dave Graham: Yes. Happy Thanksgiving. Don't forget the ice cream. Oh, no, wait. That's a note for myself. Given current circumstances, actually I'm going to adopt an elbows up Canada first attitude, and buy just as locally as possible, so Ben & Jerry's is out. I'm thinking maybe the Burt Honey Dessert Company in Nanaimo. Blue Spruce Ice Cream in Courtenay. There's Love's Ice Cream in Cumberland. Out on the west coast of the island, we have Tofino Licks Ice Cream, and the Ukee's Snack Shack in Ucluelet. And I just wanna let them all know, I'm available to do ice cream reviews. Consider it a public service that I wish to personally provide. I know, I give and I give. Hey, folks, that's it for now. Until next week, or maybe March. We'll see how it goes.

Rockin' Rhonda & The Uptown Blues Band: Here comes Peter, here comes Dave, oh listen. Bringing stories, making waves, no missing. Spinning tales in the podcast cave, so to speak. Laughs and insights everywhere - what a treat. Peter and Dave, they're on the mics. All right, join the ride. It's gonna feel just right.