Movie Monday: Riverboating

Image: A film still showing a man in a treehouse cache (SPRA 0253.01.11, Fonds 253: Jerry Stojan family fonds)

Movie Monday highlights videos from the Archives’ film collection. Every week, an archival film will be featured on our YouTube channel and here on our blog. The Movie Monday project is made possible with the generous funding support of Swan City Rotary Club of Grande Prairie

Of the many boating excursions that have been shared over the course of Movie Monday, most have included only one or two boats. But in this film, a significantly larger party of vessels and men is seen embarking on an expedition. Given Jerry Stojan’s interest in big game hunting, it is safe to assume that this footage is from a hunting trip.

A crowded boat launch is shown at the beginning of the film, followed by a cabin (perhaps some sort of hunter’s lodge), and a food cache. Caches, also known as bear boxes, protected hunters’ food supplies from being devoured by wildlife. In this case, the cache was a permanent structure that looked rather like a tree house. Where permanent bear boxes were not available, makeshift caches called bear bags could be constructed by simply hanging the supplies from a tree branch. However, if the bag was not hanging far enough from the branch, trunk, and ground, it would prove quite ineffective!

Check back next week for our final Movie Monday post!

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