Steam, Schemes and National Dreams
1984 · 28m · Canada
Genres: comedy, documentary, historical
After three young prospectors find Rocky Mountain hot springs in 1885 and try to claim them privately, a surveyor argues the discovery belongs to the public, helping set the springs and surrounding land aside as Banff National Park in a humorous re-enactment intercut with present-day Banff.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1984 NFB doc-comedy that refuses to pick a lane—part slapstick prospector farce, part institutional history lesson—is exactly the kind of formally confused thing most programmers would apologize for, which makes it fascinating to me.
The interweaving of comic reenactment with archival present-day footage positions this squarely in the Canadian documentary tradition of using humor as a vehicle for public myth-making; the formal argument about private claim versus public stewardship mirrors the film's own structural tension.
The decision to play the 1885 dispute as broad comedy while cutting to contemporary Banff creates a specific irony—that the 'settlement' of a landscape through bureaucracy is itself performed, staged, almost as provisional as the old prospectors' schemes.