Guest Post: This week’s edition is written by our Senior Editor, Taylor Leeder

I’ve spent a lot of time in North Frontenac, about an hour north of Kingston, Ontario.

Growing up, my grandma and pops had one of those cool hexagonal cottages on Eagle Lake that my family would spend weeks at every summer.

The hour-long drive there always felt so long, and I would make sure that my Game Boy had batteries, or I had my favourite CD in my Discman, or sometimes, to my dismay, a book if there were no good AA batteries to be found at home.

Despite trying to pass the time as quickly as possible, there was a point in the drive where the scenery changed, and I would stop whatever I was doing and gaze out the window.

Along the roadside, red rock outcrops would start to emerge. Then a lake. Then another, and another and yet another.

Those landmarks told me were almost there.

Eventually, we would turn onto the communal laneway to the cottage, and it was here that I could barely contain my excitement.

The laneway edged along lakes, dodged giant rocks and was almost completely sheltered by trees. Some of the hills and turns were so sharp that it felt like a roller coaster.

As a kid, I hadn’t quite grasped the dangers of a road like that and didn’t understand why my dad wasn’t driving faster.


And then we’d arrive, greeted by my grandma and pops, 5 aunts and uncles, 5 cousins. Days of swimming, fishing, tubing, canoeing and whatever games we could invent when we’d exhausted all our other options. Every night, capped off with a fire outside, the adults would play camp games with us kids.

So when we are tasked with creating a brand film for Frontenac County, these personal stories come back to the surface. It wasn’t hard for me to get behind the vision or the story.

I loved hearing what other people thought of the area.

It is indeed wild and rugged.

There actually ARE so many lakes, it makes you wonder how they found space to build houses.

Throwing a rock in any direction would almost be guaranteed to hit a lake or wetland.

Being this invested in a project isn’t always possible, but when you can find a reason to care, it makes the work all the more enjoyable. And it’s what made the story one I’m exceptionally proud of.

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WHAT WE’RE WATCHING THIS WEEK:

Frontenac County - This Is Frontenac

Being a little selfish this week, but this film meant a lot to the team to produce. We’ve lived in and around Frontenac and the surrounding regions, some of us most of our lives.

Yet this film was also a huge challenge. How do you make a tourism film while the region is pushing to create those tourism pieces? We decided to go untraditional. No scripts, no generic shot lists. A strong basis of people.

We conducted real, raw interviews and then crafted the story in reverse. The characters told us where to go and what we’d find, then we built the film through them. The result is a tourism film that is grounded in the makers, farmers, entrepreneurs, and artists who make Frontenac County what it is.