From Springbrook’s firefighting airplanes to Sylvan Lake’s row of veterans’ flags, Central Alberta has many stories to tell.
Filmmaker Rueben Tschetter is capturing more than a dozen local narratives in short documentaries that will start airing at the end of January on TELUS Optik TV-on demand and Shaw TV channel.
It happens that Tschetter’s own life story is as interesting as any of them. Although his past won’t be filmed for TV, it explains why he has an outsider’s eye for what makes Central Alberta an interesting and unique place to live.
For Tschetter grew up on the Cluny Hutterite Colony, southeast of Calgary.
While he described life in his colony as being halfway between restrictive and progressive, Tschetter explained, “I was a rebellious kid who didn’t like authority.” He left at age 18, hoping to join the army.
Since he needed to get a high school diploma to get into the Canadian Forces and, as with most Hutterite boys, his schooling was stopped at age 15, he moved into a Calgary rooming house and buckled down to do three years of upgrading.
“I walked 26 blocks to school every day, but it was cheap rent,” he recalled. The government gave him just enough money to cover his housing costs “and have a little leftover for food.”
While he wishes he’d had more support during his school years, Tschetter, who’s still in touch with Hutterite relations, appreciated feeling in charge of his own destiny. He soon volunteered as a reservist, and decided “I didn’t like it …
“It was too much like the colony. I thought, why am I replacing one system of authority for another?”
With his army dreams dashed, Tschetter began working in the oilfield. He later opted to continue his education by studying communications, first at Red Deer College then the University of Calgary. The degree program he completed in 2011 focused on visual communications and sparked his interest in video storytelling.
Tschetter said “I started getting an understanding of who Canadians are” by interviewing Albertans about what they did in their communities and how they felt about issues.
He also began forming his own Canadian identity.
“I’d felt like an immigrant,” he admitted, since colony life was so different than mainstream society. But through his discussions with people and his travels to Australia, Thailand and Hong Kong, his eyes were opened “to where I live and what a great country Canada is.”
Central Alberta became Tschetter’s film-making focus since he moved to Red Deer in 2004 and stared work with Duane Rolheiser’s 247 website news show. He feels he’s met many “trailblazers” through his videography, and has an affinity with their pioneering spirit.
Tschetter began turning his independent documentaries over to TELUS Optik and Shaw for broadcast a few years ago. When TELUS asked for more films, he said he couldn’t afford to keep making them. Tschetter was then encouraged to apply for TELUS’s Cache Project, which supports the creation of short films about Alberta’s development, culture and history.
He recently got some funding to help make his next series of six to 20-minute docs — about Red Deer’s rejuvenated downtown, Springbrooks’ Air Spray company, the flags along Hwy 11, local artists, conservationists and other subjects.
It was part of more than $3.2 million that TELUS awarded to support the creation of more than 60 new local content projects in Alberta and B.C. in 2015.
Since Red Deer lost its local TV station in 2009, Tschetter feels there’s a need to tell more Central Alberta stories than fit into the “three-and-a-half minutes Red Deer gets” on half-hour TV newscasts out of Calgary or Edmonton.
“What’s going on here is very important. There’s a lot of stuff happening here that people need to know about,” said the filmmaker, who feels videotaped stories have a different impact than those told by newspapers or radio.
“There are many unique things about our community that we don’t always recognize. Sometimes we take these things for granted …”
And we shouldn’t, he added.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com