Director, Animator, Editor, Cinematographer

(b. January 1, 1929 Winnipeg, Manitoba - d. October 29, 1988 Meech Lake, Quebec)

One of the world’s best directors and photographers of nature films, Bill Mason graduated from the University of Manitoba School of Art in 1951. He had a varied career in the visual arts – working as a painter, graphic designer, layout artist, illustrator and cartoonist – before gravitating toward film animation in 1958.

In 1960, Mason began freelancing as an animator and photographer for Crawley Films and eventually for the National Film Board. From 1962 to 1984, he worked at the NFB, where he directed, shot and edited some of the Board’s most popular shorts, including the award-winning Paddle to the Sea (1966), The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes (1968), Death of a Legend (1971) and Song of the Paddle (1978). He received four Canadian Film Awards, including one for his first film, Wilderness Treasure (1962). In all, his twenty live-action films won more than fifty national and international awards, including two BAFTA Awards for Best Specialized Film and two Academy Award® nominations.

His one and only feature documentary, Cry of the Wild, grossed one million dollars in its first week of release in 1973 and went on to become the most successful feature produced by the NFB to date. A devoted naturalist and expert canoeist, Mason was also the author of The Path of the Paddle (1980), heralded as the best book ever written on the subject of canoeing. Mason had previously directed the widely acclaimed Path of the Paddle series of short films in the late seventies; these four films were re-released over the next two decades in various compilations titled Path of the Paddle: Solos (1983), Path of the Paddle: Doubles (1983), Path of the Paddle: Quiet Water (1996) and Path of the Paddle: Whitewater (1996).

Mason wrote, directed, photographed, edited and rendered the animation for almost all of his productions. In 1974, he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Art. He retired from filmmaking in 1984 to pursue a full-time career in painting. In 1998, a Canadian postage stamp was issued in his honour.

Film and video work includes

Wilderness Treasure, 1962 (director; cinematographer; editor)
The Voyageurs, 1964 (co-cinematographer with Bernard Gosselin)
The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes, 1968 (director; writer; cinematographer; editor; animator)
Blake, 1969 (director; co-cinematographer with Blake James; editor)
Death of a Legend, 1971 (director; cinematographer; editor)
In Search of the Bowhead Whale, 1974 (director; writer; cinematographer; editor)
Wolf Pack, 1974 (director; cinematographer; editor)
Goldwood, 1974 (co-cinematographer with Blake James, Raymond Dumas and Claude Lapierre)
Face of the Earth, 1975 (director; cinematographer; editor)
Path of the Paddle: Doubles Basic, 1977 (director; writer; editor)
Path of the Paddle: Doubles Whitewater, 1977 (director; writer; editor)
Path of the Paddle: Solo Basic, 1977 (director; writer; editor)
Path of the Paddle: Solo Whitewater, 1977 (director; writer; editor)
Song of the Paddle, 1978 (director; writer; editor)
Coming Back Alive, 1980 (co-director with Wolf Koenig, Paul Cowan and Rosemarie Shapley)
Dragoncastle, 1980 (producer)
Where the Buoys Are, 1981 (co-director with Wolf Koenig, Paul Cowan and Rosemarie Shapley)
Breadalbane, 1983 (director; cinematographer, editor)
Pukaskwa National Park, 1983 (director; writer; cinematographer; editor)
Waterwalker, 1984 (director; editor; producer; narrator)
The Land that Devours Ships, 1984 (director; cinematographer; editor; animator; narrator)
Path of the Paddle: Quiet Water, 1996 (director; writer; editor)
Path of the Paddle: Whitewater, 1996 (director; writer; editor)