Once Upon a Time, a short documentary that Louise Abbott recently finished for the Blue Metropolis Foundation, was the subject of an interview on CBC Radio's "Breakaway" program on April 20, 2012.

Louise Abbott in interview with Jacquie Czernin, CBC Radio, "Breakaway"

Once Upon a Time documentary on YouTube

Grey jay (Photo: Niels Jensen)

This summer the Rural Route Communications team will be heading to the high Arctic to shoot stills and video footage. Their subjects will include Inuit residents, as well as migratory and year-round wildlife.

(Photo: Louise Abbott)

 The Rural Route Communications team has been on assignment again for the Cree Outfitting and Tourism Association (COTA). We travelled for two weeks in March by truck, snowshoe, and snowmobile in Eeyou Istchee, as the Cree call their territory in northern Quebec. It was unseasonably warm, and by the end of our trip, the snow had largely melted, and thin ice was putting an end to snowmobile travel on lakes and rivers. The photographs that we took will be used to top up the COTA photo bank.

 (Photo: Niels Jensen) 

Wakefield Community Centre (Photo: Niels Jensen)

On the weekend of January 21-22, 2012, the Rural Route Communications team took time off from research and photography in the Townships, and headed to Wakefield in western Quebec to shoot video footage and stills of a workshop at the local community centre. The workshop, sponsored by the Blue Metropolis Foundation in collaboration with the Quebec Writers' Federation, is part of an oral and written storytelling project called "Once Upon a Time." The workshop leader was Laura Teasdale, a playwright, actress, and director based in Knowlton.

The photo below shows Louise Abbott at work. She recently added this boompole with a pro-sound ambient dipstick to her kit so that she can bring a shotgun microphone much closer to the sound source without interfering with the framing of the picture.

Niels Jensen, meanwhile, has acquired a Sony A77, which enables him to create panoramas, like the one above, in the camera itself. This new compact model also has built-in GPS tagging, which will be particularly useful for the work that Rural Route Communications does in northern Canada.

(Photo: Niels Jensen)