Brokeback Mountain for real
By Steven Fosbery, Elizabeth Meryment
July 21, 2006
STANDING beside a surging, curving river at the foot of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, I'm surrounded by deep green forests of fir, spruce and aspen. It's raining, cold and altogether miserable, but I hardly notice.
I've come to this little-known corner of the Canadian wilderness to follow in the footsteps of two celluloid cowboys, hoping the astonishing scenery in the film Brokeback Mountain is the work of nature and not a special effects team. I quickly have my answer and smile with pleasure at the rugged beauty around me. As I turn back towards the road where my car is parked, three nervous white-tail deer appear and hop across the road. I stand stock still and observe these delicate creatures as they disappear into the thick forest.
This is Kananaskis Country, one of Canada's great secrets, an unheralded collection of provincial parks only an hour's drive west of the booming, oil-rich city of Calgary in southern Alberta.
Bart, my attentive guide, suggests a dignified retreat to the car. "It's raining and it's cold," he says, in a tone that suggests I may not have noticed. As I gaze at the avalanche paths appearing like grey ribbons hanging from the snowy peaks, I find my tolerance for inclement weather has suddenly increased.
We ascend Moore Mountain, one of a number of mountains used to make a composite Brokeback in the film, and drive higher and deeper into K Country, as it's called. The summer tourist season hasn't started and we have the place to ourselves, only the road evidence that others have preceded us here.
Over the mountain, we descend into Kananaskis Valley and spend the night at the upmarket Delta Lodge near Kananaskis Village. The next day we pass glistening, pristine lakes, including the Upper Kananaskis. In the background looms Mt Indefatigable, one of 39 mountains in K Country named after Royal Navy admirals and warships. The British Empire may be gone, but its fingerprints remain. The encircling trail I follow offers spectacular views of the lake, the forests and the Rockies. I'm snapping pictures, convinced each one will look like a postcard; how could they not?
I sight more deer. These are a little bigger, darker and, curiously, appear to be wearing the ears of a much larger animal. "They're called Mule Deer," Bart explains. Before they disappear into the forest, I notice they bound, rather than run, with all four feet landing together.
The forest is so dense that the only way each tree can receive direct sunlight is to grow straight and end in a point. The massed effect is breathtaking. Snap.
I ask Bart to conjure a moose and around the next bend, presto, I see two. These are ugly animals and standing knee-deep in a bog, drinking bog water, does nothing to enhance their appearance.
The day remains cold and wet, and walking is restricted, but there's always something to see, from the grand, sweeping views to a group of big-horned sheep defying gravity on the side of a steep hill, small, nervous red squirrels and the ubiquitous pink Wild Rose, Alberta's official flower. We spend the next night out of K Country at a working farm that has survived by opening a B&B called the Bloomin' Inn, run by Francis and Lorraine Cyr. Old-fashioned in look and style Bloomin' Inn is packed with rural memorabilia, and its warm atmosphere makes it like being in a friend's home.
Much of what we eat is produced on the farm, including steak, sausages, eggs, vegetables and Lorraine's home-made syrups and sauces. It's all delicious. That night I sleep like a farmer's baby.
Brokeback Mountain is just one example of a US film that is set in the States, but filmed in Canada. As far back as 1954, when Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum starred in the "reckless, roaring adventure", River of No Return, and Monroe had to be saved from drowning when her boots filled with water, American films – and more lately television shows – have been shot north of the border. In Los Angeles, Canada is known as "Hollywood North". US film technicians, angry at losing work, unkindly refer to their Canadian counterparts as "Mexicans with sweaters".
Based on the short story by American writer E. Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain tells the story of Ennis Del Mar (played by Australia's Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), two cowboys who fall in love while herding sheep on the harsh, high grasslands of Wyoming. It was filmed in southern Alberta (as was River of No Return).
Much has been made of the film's Canadian location, specifically the spectacular mountain scenery, which at times threatens to upstage the story. But Canadians, I discover, are also proud of the roles that other, less glamorous locations played in the film.
When I arrange to visit the locations where Brokeback was shot, it's the mountains that interest me. My kind hosts, from Tourism Calgary and Tourism Alberta, interpret this to mean every location they can find – proving that English and Canadian are similar but different languages.
So it is that my first stop is booming, oil-rich Calgary in southern Alberta, followed by a number of small Alberta towns. Over several days I'm shown many locations: a living room that looks exactly as it did before being remodelled for the film's Thanksgiving scene; an alleyway, not unlike the one near my Sydney office, which in the film was a seedy Mexican street; the bar where Jack meets his future wife; the pub where Ennis meets his girlfriend; and the diner where he meets her again after they break up. I'm also taken to the factory where the cowboy boots for the film were made.
I'm shown walls, stairs, verandas, parking lots, a plot of land where a trailer park was created and the hamburger bar favoured by director Ang Lee, whose favourite food is fast.
We drive through prairie country, east of the Rocky Mountains, a vast, flat expanse where "you can watch your dog run away for three days". This is ranching and farming country, with lots of "pumping jacks" (small oil derricks) on both sides of the road.
We pass several communities of Hutterites who, like the Amish and Mennonites, largely shun the modern world, but unlike them employ modern farm machinery and mobile phones.
On a prairie farm I'm shown an old, collapsing wooden house which doubles, in the film, as the home of Jack's parents. The house proves as interesting as an empty garden shed, but Larry Hixt, the farmer on whose property it stands, is a humorous, slightly odd, middle-aged man who pulls off his baseball cap and replaces it with a cowboy hat when we arrive.
Hixt is dedicated to preserving all things western and has created what he calls his "Grand Ole West Villa Ranche".
He has bought, dismantled and reassembled on the farm a number of old wooden buildings to create a short wild west street of three houses on each side and one at the end. The houses are all slightly off kilter, so it's both a familiar and eccentric scene. It's fun but not authentic enough for the purists or big enough for a general audience.
Hixt suggests I walk to the end of the short street and turn right. My jaw drops at the sight of a wide western street with about 15 buildings on each side, including a saloon, haberdashery, barber shop, stable, hotel and bath house.
Each building is appropriately furnished and as I walk slowly down the middle of the street it's suddenly High Noon, I'm Gary Cooper and the town's future depends on me and my six shooter.
After I save the town, Hixt hands me his card and says, "Tell your upside-down friends in Australia about this place." Sure, pardner.
Calgary is our base for two nights and three days during this forensic examination of film locations. One day we're even joined by the film's location manager, Daryl Solly. Just what we need, I groan inwardly. But Solly, who drove 35,000km in six months in search of the right locations for Brokeback, is a mine of interesting film anecdotes and after a day in his company I understand how a talented crew with a good budget can transform a rainforest into a desert, or an ocean floor, or an early 1960s suburban living room.
Finally, on the evening of the third day we turn off the highway into Kananaskis Country. This sublime wilderness is a playground for Calgarians who are close enough for day tripping and prefer to avoid the crowds at the famous Banff National Park on K Country's northern border. Otherwise, inexplicably, it remains little known.
The 20-year love affair and relationship between Jack and Ennis was never going to end happily, but it could have been worse; they at least had Brokeback Mountain.
Steven Fosbery was a guest of Tourism Calgary and Tourism Alberta.
http://escape.news.com.au/story/0,9142,19861458-27985,00.html
