'Tired of apathy contributing to Great Lakes demise, filmmaker creates 'Waterlife

NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. - For years, filmmaker Kevin McMahon wanted to make a cautionary documentary on the Great Lakes. Finding someone to fund it was the tough part.
"Everybody would say, `Yeah, whatever - the Great Lakes, pollution," recalls McMahon. "But it was really Al Gore's film that opened the door."
That would be Gore's Oscar-winning 2006 film "An Inconvenient Truth," which explained the effect of climate change on the world and became one of the most popular documentaries ever made. Suddenly, movies with an environmental message weren't taboo.
"It showed the commercial people that there was an interest out there in the environment," says McMahon.
And so, after six years, thousands of kilometres and countless interviews, McMahon plunges into the Great Lakes with "Waterlife" - a sobering look at an ecosystem responsible for 20 per cent of Earth's fresh water.
Mess with it, McMahon warns, and you mess with the planet.
But as the film shows, the damage is well underway with toxins, overfishing and old-fashioned stupidity. McMahon points to a four-year-old study in which 60 top scientists concluded the Great Lakes are under so much siege that they're risking "irreversible collapse."
"Waterlife" feels like fate for the former Niagara Falls resident. Several of his documentaries - including his first full-length feature "The Falls" - have dealt with water in some way.
"I spend so much time on the (Great) Lakes - I go camping on Lake Huron every summer with my kids. I spend a lot of time out there and I could see what was going on, and it was pissing me off. I felt it was time to actually deal with it."
Thirty years ago, McMahon was a writer with the Brock University Press when he covered the Love Canal environmental disaster in Niagara Falls, N.Y. That abuse of trust and devastation on the environment played a huge role in 1990's "The Falls," which took a harsh look at the home he loved.
He went back to Love Canal for "Waterlife," showing a new community sprouting next to the sealed-off area where 21,000 tonnes of toxic waste was discovered buried under a residential community, leading to birth defects and chromosome damage among residents.
"When we shot there 20 years ago, the place was this desolate wasteland. And now it's a neighbourhood again, which is very weird."
"The extraordinary thing is, the canal is still sitting there. It has these pipes sticking out of it and there are pumps going. Right across the street, there's people having barbecues."
The film puts a human face on the Great Lakes' dilemma, from a woman who walked 17,000 kilometres along the water to "identify" with them, to a strange village where toxins have ensured almost every new baby is female.
The signs for trouble are all around us, warns McMahon. When will people take it seriously?
"As long as you turn on the tap and water comes out, and nobody tells you to boil it, you're not going to think about it," he says. "And you probably don't go in the lake. It's become like a cultural memory - `Oh, it's not very good to swim in them,' so as a general rule, people don't."
"So this weird apathy sets in. One of the things I tried to do with this film is not just look at the pollution, but also to look at the beauty and wonder of this amazing watery seascape. And say to people, `This is an incredible thing."'
"I keep saying to people in Toronto, `You know, you live in a harbour town, but you'd never know it.' Or St. Catharines, for that matter."
The film is narrated by Gord Downie, whose band The Tragically Hip contributes a new song.
The soundtrack also includes Sam Roberts, Daniel Lanois and Robbie Robertson.
For McMahon, a former reporter with the St. Catharines Standard, his devotion to documentaries runs deep. He has released nearly 20 projects under his production company, Primitive Entertainment.
"I love it. I mean, you don't make much money. When you have a feature in movie theatres you get attention, but most documentaries go on television and disappear."
"But I love the work. I love the research, the writing, the meeting people, the shooting