Characters
Characters
Meet our film subjects: Wayne, Halin + Violet
WAYNE PRICE
Master carver Wayne Price is from coastal Haines, Alaska. Wayne is a Tlingit visual artist and master carver who has helped revive traditional dugout canoes in southern Yukon and Southeast Alaska. The dugout canoe is central to Wayne’s personal quest for healing. He has a difficult past and even he is surprised that he lived to celebrate his 60th birthday. Wayne speaks of canoes as a vehicle to connect to his ancestors and to other damaged individuals who need healing. Wayne is bringing others in the community on his journey, giving them the opportunity to connect with nature and their culture through the wood and the water.
Wayne has overseen the creation of a dozen canoes. He constantly looks for ways to encourage young people to return to the ocean. Recently he has started to dream about fishing and hunting from the dugout with handmade tools and nets. During filming Wayne became an associate professor teaching traditional Northwest Coast arts at University of Alaska in Juneau.
Wayne is one of the most accomplished carvers in Alaska, though his true calling is as a mentor. Wayne and Cherri Price operate Silvercloud Art Center in Haines, Alaska, and run the North Tide Canoe Kwaan paddling group. Wayne has helped revive traditional dugout canoes and the Tlingit connection with the sea in Southeast Alaska. Wayne has also found kinship and support among his inland relations. For years he’s travelled back and forth across the mountains to Southern Yukon, sharing his knowledge and skills with First Nations artists and youth in Whitehorse. www.silvercloudart.com
HALIN DE REPENTIGNY
Francophone Halin de Repentigny’s life story is a romantic quest guided by nostalgia for the Canadian North. With a grade school education and dreams of the northern wilds, Halin fled from Quebec during his troubled youth to make his home in Dawson City. For years Halin eked a living from the land as a trapper, guide and handyman, always supplemented by his work as an artist. He’s built a dozen birchbark canoes on his own, inspired by 19th century artist and writer Tappan Adney and his books about the Klondike and traditional canoes.
Halin’s artwork is embedded in Dawson’s mystique and he’s built himself into the lore of the North. His paintings of the Klondike and his birchbark canoes adorn the establishments of Dawson and evoke times past of Voyageurs and gold miners, wilderness adventure and rugged individualism, and French-Canadian camaraderie. Outwardly, he’s a solitary rebel artist with a cavalier attitude and rough language whose life is comprised of a string of adventures.
As he reaches his 60th birthday, Halin is becoming more reflective. During filming, two old friends in Dawson face terminal illnesses. Almost twenty years ago Halin and his ragtag group of friends paddled a birchbark Voyageur canoe on the Yukon River. He restores an old canoe so they can re-create their journey and celebrate friends and the passage of time. halinderepentigny.com
VIOLET GATENSBY
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