THE MOUNTIE JUST GETS DREAMIER:

Paul Gross deserves our support (National Post Editorial Board, October 16, 2008)

As Paul Gross's Great War movie Passchendaele prepares for its general release in Canada this weekend, it is time for us to set aside debates over public arts funding for a moment and think about supporting an ambitious, courageous, all-Canadian project with our own consumer dollars. [...]

Ultimately, if we have a legitimate interest in the existence of a financially comfortable domestic film industry we can always use another proof-of-concept that a (relatively) big-budget Canadian movie with a Canadian story can attract audiences inside and outside Canada.

In the meantime, it is already worth celebrating the other admirable feature of Mr. Gross's approach: his commitment to a genuine Canadian history that reaches back beyond the Trudeauvian Year Zero.

Although he used active Canadian soldiers as extras, the actor-director shied away from professing one view or the other on the war in Afghanistan. (The screenwriting, he points out, began while the country was still Soviet-occupied, and pre-production started before 9/11.) But he does think it is important to reject the idea that taking sides in war is an unnatural or novel role for Canadians.

"When we view ourselves exclusively as peacekeepers," Mr. Gross told the CBC this week, "we ought to understand that, yes, we're extraordinarily good at that - to some extent, we invented the concept - but that's relatively recent in our history. We also are warriors, and we were particularly good at it in the First World War and the Second World War."

He added: "How do you know where you're going if you don't know where it is you come from?"