The Voyageurs

An animated film about the hardships of voyageurs' lives in the early Canadian fur trade.

The yellowed pages of a travel journal, a letter unearthed by chance, photographs recovered from a company's dusty archives: These are but a few of the scattered materials used to reconstruct the fascinating and little known adventure of Revillon Brothers, a Parisian merchant of elegant furs, who came to Canada at the turn of the century to enter into the fur trade. But the adventure comes to an end in 1936 when Revillon's great rival, the Hudson's Bay Company, buys out the French company. Victorious, the Hudson's Bay Company, is the only of the two to be remembered in the history books. In between the words of the few remaining witnesses to a lost history, in the memories of descendants of employees and in specialists' passion for the fragments recovered, a world long thought vanished is recreated in front of our eyes. In French with English subtitles.

A young Ojibwa girl of 1770, Ikwe awakens one night from a disturbing dream about a strange man. The arrival of a young Scottish fur trader transforms her dream into reality. Marrying him, Ikwe leaves her village on the shores of Georgian Bay. Although the union promises prosperity for her tribe, it means hardship and isolation for Ikwe. Values and customs clash until, finally, the events of Ikwe's dream unfold with tragic clarity. Part one of the series entitled Daughters of the Country.