Bringing Marmora’s forgotten history to life
Film
B y Ad a m G ra y
Sean Scally has quickly
become one of the best known documentary filmmakers in the Quinte Region. He has won the Best Local Film Award at Belleville Downtown DocFest twice, and his films are always among DocFest audience favourites. Scally has a unique gift for telling local historical stories in a compelling and accessible way. His films take obscure stories from dusty historical bookshelves and breathe new life into them. These forgotten stories and people emerge from the past onto the screen like ghosts embedding themselves
in our collective memory. Scally is a man driven by passion for his art form not by profit. He loves what he does.
Ironmasters of Upper Canada, Scally’s latest documentary, tells the story of Charles Hayes’ epic battle to create and maintain Marmora’s Ironworks in the early 1800s. The film paints a vivid picture of a driven man, facing enormous odds in the brutal wilderness of Upper Canada. The audience is taken on a 200-year journey through Marmora’s history from a sparsely populated colony to the charming village it is today.
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The film is based on André Philpot’s book A Species of Adventure and commissioned by the Marmora Historical Foundation for Marmora’s 200th anniversary. Scally had worked with local historian and artist Anne Philpot on a previous film Lumberbaron: The Gilmour Years, during which Anne gave him a copy of her husband André’s book and Scally fell in love with the story. “How do you not like a story that involves John A. Macdonald, Anthony Manahan, the Riel Rebellion and all that stuff?! It’s a great story that connects so much Canadian history. Everything clicked for me.
