Shadow of a Giant is an interactive web documentary that tells the story of one Canada’s largest
environmental disasters, Yellowknife’s Giant Mine. Buried in collapsing chambers, within the municipal
boundary of Yellowknife, and beside the 9th largest lake in the world, sits 237,000 tons of the highly toxic
contaminant, arsenic trioxide, a byproduct of the defunct gold mine. The city of Yellowknife and the
surrounding aboriginal communities depend on a remediation plan that will refrigerate the arsenic into place,
until a permanent solution can be found. Shadow of a Giant tells the story of Giant through the people who
live on top of it and call it home. From the remediation (clean up) team, who work to stabilize the arsenic;
to the people who live and work in Yellowknife; to those who worked at the mine; to the proponents of the
extraction industry in the north; to the Yellowknives Dene First Nations that live within hundreds of metres of
the contaminated site. Their collective voices tell the story of Giant’s history. Their ideas of what the Giant
mine site could become reflects a painful history for these communities, but also reveals a brighter future
this toxic legacy.
Director: Clark Ferguson
Producers: Lesley Johnson and Clark Ferguson with Western Arctic Moving Pictures
Writers and Research: Clark Ferguson and Lesley Johnson
Animators: Sasha Stanojevic, Lyuba Kirkova, Saki Murotani
Website Graphical Design: Sasha Stanojevic, Lyuba Kirkova and Sailing on Sound
Website Coding, Design and Web Animation: Sailing on Sound
Camera: Clark Ferguson
Additional Camera: Davis Heslep and Pablo Saravanja
Location Sound: Clark Ferguson and Lesley Johnson
Editing: Clark Ferguson and additional editing by Paul Neudorf
Music and Scoring: Gilles Zolty with Chris Flower
Audio Mix: Gilles Zolty
This project commenced through a Canada Council Residency project through Western Arctic Moving Pictures (WAMP) in the fall of 2012.
Special thanks to Sergeo Kirby and Loaded Pictures
Participants:
Adrian Paradis
Kevin O’Reilly
Walt Humphries
Erin Freeland Ballantyne
Lee Selleck
Gary Vaillancourt
Fred Sangris
Bill Enge
Susan Enge
Ryan Silke
Mayor Mark Heyck
Yvonne Quick
David Livingstone
Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox
Jeff Humble
Dennis Bevington
Mark Brown
Thank You:
All of our project participants
The Giant Mine Remediation Project Team (AANDC and GNWT)
The board of Western Arctic Moving Pictures
Yellowknives Dene First Nation
The City of Yellowknife
North Slave Métis Association
The Mining Heritage Society of the NWT
The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre
Jeremy Emerson
Davis Heslep
Terry Woolf
Pablo Saravanja
Sergeo Kirby
Tamas Wormser
France Benoit
Amos Scott
Laura Wright
Michael Simons
Paul Shoebridge
Meagan Wholberg
Erika Nyyssonen
Camilla MacEachern
Jay Bulckaert
Loren McGinnis
Riel Stevenson Burke
Travis Mercredi
Melaw Nakehk’o
Joel Ashley Maillet
Pat Kane
Vanessa Baron
Jillian Mazur
Shannon Gault
Archival Photography from the NWT Archives and include photography from:
John Russell fonds
June Helm fonds
The Canadian Government Travel Bureau
Henry Busse fonds
Tessa Macintosh
Valerie Conrad
and other unknown photographers.
N-1979-052-1956, N-1979-052-4658, N-1979-003-0510, N-1979-063-0007, N-1979-003-0123, N-1979-052-2011, N-1979-052-1927, N-1979-052-1934, G-1995-001-6846, G-1995-001-6213,
N-1995-002-4106, N-1979-053-0179, N-1079-073-0566, N-1979-056-0049, N-1979-052-1947, G-1979-012-0005, N-1979-052-4818, N-1979-052-4665, N-1979-052-0182, N-1979-052-1952,
N-1995–002-4107, N-1979-052-1523, N-1979-052-1529, N-1979-003-0112, N-1979-053-0079,
N-1979-052-2029, N-1979-052-1952, N-1979-052-1947, N-1979-004-0173, N-1979-003-0124, N-2003-037-0352
Archival Video:
‘The 10,000 Brick’
Permission for use from Terry Woolf
‘This is Yellowknife’
Permission for use from NWT Mining Heritage Society.
‘Archival footage of Johnny Baker and Yellowknife’,
Permission from the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre
LOGOS
Canada Council of the Arts (first and prominent)
NWT Industry Tourism and Investment
NWT Arts Council
WAMP
Saskatchewan Arts Board
Saskatchewan Film Pool