Love Affair with Politics: A Portrait of Marion Dewar

The scouts

A straightforward political hagiography from the NFB vault—exactly the kind of earnest institutional doc that consensus loves and I'd normally pass on, but Nash's refusal to sensationalize Dewar or manufacture conflict is weirdly radical for 1987, a portrait that trusts its subject's unglamorous work to speak for itself.

Terre Nash's portrait sits elegantly within the Canadian documentary tradition of intimate civic portraiture; the formal restraint—letting Dewar's vision accumulate through policy and modest testimony rather than scored drama—positions this as essential period craft that rewards the close eye.

Nash makes the decisive choice to shoot Dewar not as hero but as administrator, and that tonal discipline—the way a cutaway to housing blueprints carries more weight than any talking-head affirmation—is what transforms a municipal profile into something that actually matters.