I had the honour and pleasure of knowing Bill Mason for fourteen short years. We met in the winter of 1974 (on his outdoor hockey rink of course) and we immediately made plans for a Dumoine Trip.
Our last trip was on the Nahanni in 1988 a few months before his death, a bitter sweet experience. In between were many Ottawa Valley river trips and Little Nahanni, Hood and Mountain River trips in the NWT.
This was was also the time that Bill was filming and writing his great Path of the Paddle movies and books. Since 1974 we (Trailhead/Blackfeather) were immersed in teaching whitewater .The emergence of Bills films 1977 and books 1980 were a teachers dream.We used his 16 mm films as classroom programs ahead of weekend teaching sessions on the Madawaska and Dumoine for ten years until they came out on VHS and DVDs.
Bills Books often accompanied us on courses.
Path of the Paddle
Song of the Paddle
Wilderness Artist (by Ken Buck his cameraman)
Thrill of the Paddle ( by son Pauls and Mark Scriver book)
“I couldn’t think of anything that would make Bill happier than knowing this collection of Memorabilia would be generating money for developing the educational features of the Sentier Dumoine”
The films are contained in the NFB travel container Bill used to take films from his studio at Meech Lake to the Montreal NFB headquarters. They have not been projected since 1987 so I cannot vouch for their condition.
The books are in good condition all signed to me from the Masons
Wally Schaber
