The Lake / nx̌aʔx̌aʔitkʷ documentary about lost B.C. opera sees its small-screen debut, starting December 14

Film follows Vancouver Opera chorus soprano and Astrolabe Musik Theatre artistic director Heather Pawsey on her journey to decolonize historic work

By Janet Smith

The Lake / nx̌aʔx̌aʔitkʷ.

A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT a Vancouver soprano’s work to revive a lost B.C. opera, The Lake / nx̌aʔx̌aʔitkʷ, is getting its television premiere at TELUS originals, free on demand starting December 14.

The film follows Vancouver Opera chorus soprano and Astrolabe Musik Theatre artistic director Heather Pawsey on her journey of cross-cultural discovery as she attempts to decolonize a 1950s Canadian opera about the syilx people of B.C.’s Okanagan Valley.

Before the film premiered at DOXA Film Festival last year, Pawsey told Stir the story of finding Barbara Pentland and poet Dorothy Livesay’s long-lost 1952 opera The Lake—uncovering the handwritten score at the Canadian Music Centre back in 1995.

That led to John Bolton directing this first Canadian opera to be shot specifically as a film. It features Westbank First Nation elder and artist Delphine Derickson alongside Pawsey, the two forming a close friendship as they interweave syilx/Okanagan perspectives and music into the production.

The opera tells the story of Susan Allison, the first white woman to settle west of Okanagan Lake as the young bride of rancher John Allison. It traces their bonds with the local Westbank First Nations people—not to mention a sacred creature in the lake ( ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ in the syilx language, better known to settlers as Ogopogo). The world premiere of the opera, which included Indigenous music incorporated into a new composition by Leslie Uyeda, was held at Quail’s Gate winery in the summer of 2014, on the shores of the lake of the title.

You can stream the film here starting December 14.  

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