“Canada is one of the very few countries in
the world left which has real frontiers,” says Charley Boorman. “Big, massive open spaces, so hopefully for
the viewer, it will be a great experience to see on TV.”
The English actor
and television presenter, who is perhaps best known for his award- winning series
Long Way
Round and Long Way Down co-starring fellow actor and friend Ewan McGregor, set off on a six-week challenge
to travel across Canada by motorbike this summer.
“I always wanted to stop and spend more time in one country,” he says. “You get a feel for the whole country
and not just the fun stuff you can do as you go along... The real idea here was to try to figure out how to
get under the [surface] a little bit more of the country that we’re in, and sort of find out as much about
Canada as we can.”
On June 9, Boorman began his extreme travels in Newfoundland, which included sailing among icebergs in St.
Antony’s Iceberg Alley.
Throughout his stops across Canada, he also braved the recreational sport of wreck diving in Fathom Five,
Ont., arduous mountain climbing at Mount Fable in Canmore, Alta., and of course, fast-paced dirt biking in
New Brunswick, just to name a few.
Fans were able to track his progress online (bigearth.com), where they could read his adventure blog and view
videos and photos of him and his crew in various locales. For those interested in viewing his full
excursions, there’s good news: Beginning next year, Boorman’s adventures will be aired on TV in a series of
four, one-hour episodes, as well as detailed in a book, Extreme Frontiers.
“Hopefully viewers will get a real taste for adventure and a bit of history and a bit of
feeling for the country.”
Q&A with Charley Boorman
Tell me about your recent trip.
How did it go?
I think it worked
really well with the other stuff that we have done. With Long Way Around, and Long Way Down on a lot of those [episodes] we always went
quickly through the countries. I always wanted to stop and spend more time in one country, to get to know
that one country. The idea for Extreme Frontiers was that you would choose a country, like Canada, and you would do the whole TV show in
it. I suppose the extreme part of it was that we climbed from mountains to mountains, and we did all sorts of
fun stuff… From north, south, east, west. Up north by the Arctic Ocean, and how people live and what goes on
up there. Down south by the badlands, and how there used to be cattle rustling… You get a feel for the whole
country and not just the fun stuff you can do as you go along… We tried to get to every province. It’s been a
great, fun experience to find out all about Canada, and the fun stuff you can do.
Why
Canada?
Ewan [McGregor] and I
had gone through Canada on Long Way Around a number of years ago and I hadn’t spent that much time in it but we both loved it.
There was an opportunity when we were talking about which country we would like to go to and Canada seemed
like a really good idea, to be ability to spend some time to go through it… The main thing, in the past we
have gone through countries quite quickly and have gone through a lot of countries. When we went to Africa,
we went to many different countries — from the north to the middle to the south, and they’re totally
different. The real idea here was to try and to get under the [surface] a little bit more of the country that
we’re in, and sort of find out as much about Canada as we can.
Have you always had an
interest in dirt biking?
I have also had an
interest in bikes. Since I was six or seven years old, I had been obsessed with them. It’s always been a
fascination to me. When I met Ewan on the film set of The Serpent’s Kiss, one of our first conversations was about
motorcycles. I think it’s like someone who loves horseback riding or loves mountaineering, or something like
that. Once you do it, you always find an excuse to go back and do it again. Then it becomes a part of your
life. It dictates the decisions you make, from buying a house, you think, “Where can I put my motorbike?”
(laughs)
It kind of takes
over your life, really.
What’s lovely about buying
motorcycles is that when you meet people who are like-minded and who like motorbikes, there is an instant
connection there. It’s a global, instant connection. You can be anywhere in the world and ride a motorbike
and someone will come up and say, “Hi.” Sometimes, the person who you least expect to be riding a motorbike
rides a bike.
Tell me more about your
past work with Ewan McGregor.
We did
Long Way
Around and
Long Way
Down, which of
course, Ewan and I had met on the film set and it was one of those things that you chat about, a long bike
trip and a lot of the time, these ideas never come about.
Ewan is a lovely guy. He’s
incredibly kind and very generous — He’s very thoughtful. I think for both of us, when we did
Long Way
Around, it changed
our lives a little bit. When you do a big journey and you see parts of the world that not many people do, it
changes your perspective a little bit. You probably come back a little bit of a better person, hopefully.
He’s very kind, he’s always got your back. You always feel comfortable when you’re in his
company.
What can people expect
to see in the series, Extreme Frontiers?
Canada is one of
the very few countries in the world left that has real frontiers. Big, massive open spaces. So hopefully for
the viewer, it will be a great experience to see, really, the whole of Canada — from St. John’s to St.
Antony’s, to the middle of Canada, to the very top of the Arctic Ocean with the Nunavut people, to the very
south down by the badlands, through the Rocky Mountains, and to Vancouver Island. Hopefully they will get a
real taste for adventure and a bit of history and a feeling for the country.
There’s also a book
being released, tell me about that.
The book has a little
bit more than the TV show. It will be a complement; it will be the same thing but in a lot more
detail.
What are some of your
favourite places you have visited?
Since I have been to
the Rocky Mountains in Calgary — I have never done that before — I rode in the Calgary parade at the Calgary
Stampede, which is kind of fun. In Toronto, we went diving in one of the great lakes, and ship wrecked, that
was pretty cool. There was a ton of stuff, it is so difficult to say. We went up north and went to the ice
fields. It was just really cool. The great thing about Canada is that if you like outdoors, there are pretty
much limitless things that you can do.
What surprised you the
most about Canada?
One of the things I was
surprised about was when we went up to Tuk, in the Northwest Territories, by the Arctic Ocean, they took us
down into this handmade freezer they had built into the permafrost. What I hadn’t realized was that all of
that tundra is just sitting on ice, basically. When you go down about 76 feet into the permafrost, it’s just
layers and layers and layers of ice and I was quite to realize that the whole of that tundra is just
floating, really. (laughs) And it’s melting. •
