Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

  Cue the actor. Eric Peterson to receive Order of Canada - Socka You Knew He Was Important Because Of The Size Of The Camera Crew I knew that the film crew of six had to be from the National Film Board . It was 8am on Saturday at the St Lawrence Market, and the crew members were flush with the knowledge of earning time and half pa y.  They were all men. Of course. They were all in the 30s. They all looked like they had worked for the Peace Corp - a few steak dinners ago. Old jeans, but pressed. And of course, the pre-planned 5 o'clock shadow that requires you to shave at 9 oclock the evening before to look like a real player!   Who else but the National Film Board could afford to go this big, this early? Who else could afford a camera man, a sound man, a director, a man with a monitor around his neck (and a cool hood to let him watch the action in the dark), a model release guy and some other man that looked for suckers to fluff up and interview? Sigh. I w

GEORGE HUNTER, PASSES AT 91 George Hunter,  a  Canadian photography pioneer, has passed away in Mississauga at the age of 91.  Hunter, a long-time National Film Board photographer captured the disappearing nomadic Inuit way of life in Canada's Arctic.   His career spanned 70 years and took pictures all over Canada, the United States and the world.  he considered himself as a visual historian and  "Canada's Location Photographer". Two of his pictures have been used on Canadian paper bills - salmon ($5 bill) and a petro-chemical plant ($10 bill). Hunter took pictures for many news sources and high profile clients including the Winnipeg Tribune, Expo 67, and the Royal Family.  In the fifties after leaving the National Film Board, Hunter learned how to fly, purchased a Piper Cub and soon became an expert at low-level photography.  In the 60s he built a photography bus (complete with a 7 metre ladder on the roof for high-angle shots) and spent ten years traveling a