Friday, January 27, 2012
It was back to the Bridge on the River Kwai for two weeks in January. The purpose was twofold: to continue my 30 years of exploration along the Death Railway and - with Sir Rod Beattie - survey stone age caves he's discovered in his 20 years treading the often jungled over railroad bed himself. I've just sponsored him into The Explorers Club where he's been elected as a fellow Fellow. I know a number of archaeologists there who may be interested in following up.
The bridge is entirely different than the one fictionalized in the movie. Patched shrapnel marks are clearly displayed from heavy Allied bombing in 1945, as I mentioned in my Kwai Blah Blah a year ago. It follows this one for anyone wishing a review of the Death Railway's brutal history.
The bridge and railway is now a major Thai tourist site, of course, and attracts these lovely girls. Or are they all girls...? I don't think so, but this is laissez-faire Thailand after all where anything goes, well demonstrated in the wonderfully no-holds-barred Hangover II.
I spent some of that time researching alone. Normally I'm more interested in the sections that were ripped up in 1948 but this time I turned more to the remaining line from Kanchanburi to Nam Tok still open for tourists. And I was appalled by its condition.
Sleepers, or ties, everywhere were rotted out. Spikes had often worked an inch or more upward and could be pulled out by hand. It almost looked like you could kick some rails over.
Can you believe the condition of this tie? The bar beside it is installed to stabilize the track, if you can believe it. They're not infrequent. The ties are spaced double what ours ours. A train with a full sized diesel engine and 3-4 passenger cars uses this to carry tourists the 50 kil to Nom Tok and back. I sure the hell wouldn't be found on it.
These are used ties stacked up in Kanburi by the station. The one on the right is fine, it's solid teak. But the one the left used the heart of the tree which is weak and rots out fast in this climate and shouldn't have been used. There were a lot used, part of the normal Asian culture of corruption even during the building of the Death Railway.
As in Laos where old bomb casings are used to hold up pig pens and the like, old ties find another use.
Old rails along the line used as telegraph-cum-communication poles.
As always, I visited the two cemeteries to pay my respects, this time seeking out the 20 Canadians, all in the British military, who died here. Norman Maurice Dorval, from Dawson City, Yukon, is one. He lies beside three buddies from his regiment all with the same death date. They were executed for an escape attempt. They lie in a row otherwise occupied by "Soldiers of the 1939-45 War" to set them apart. There were about 50 executions.
But I could not not continue exploring along the deserted line, my real passion. I found this footing for a bridge - and recognized the marks as finger tracks. The starving POW - or perhaps coolie, the grooves are very narrow - leveled out the concrete by hand. A moment in a tormented history caught in time and cement.
On the days scheduled for caving, Sir Rod led Brit Martin Saunders and I up 45 degree slopes through bamboo jungle that rose forever. Used to this, Rod did it with ease and was gracious, not cackling at us too loudly for our frequent rest stops.
The two of them started twenty years ago clearing off much of the old railway bed, an unbelievably strenuous exercise in this climate - or any other. But it's been awhile for Martin.
Climbing the several hundred feet up to the old railbed knackered me. My thighs were screaming for the next two days. This is a cleared cutting on the old bed.
Southeast Asia is made up of limestone raised from the sea by tectonic action and is riddled like Swiss cheese with caves.
The openings come in all sizes.
Down we go, our brave knight in the lead with a machete in case there's slithery varmits down there.
I had no sooner descended than I was hit with acute shortness of breath and I thought, uh oh, is this the end of the movie? As I waited for the next step - the elephant stomping on my chest, the lightning bolt of pain down the arm I thought, well it's been a good, interesting run but the curtain is closing a bit early, dammit. 
When the elephant didn't immediately appear I thought, if I'm going to croak I don't want to do it in this dark, dank, damp cave but in bright Thai sunlight. Fighting for air, I weakly scrambled up and out of the cave where I sat several minutes chest heaving, unaware that Martin was doing the same thing. My normal breathing returned and I wondered, what the hell was that all about...? Did the clot break up?
Just before I went into what I thought was cardiac arrest, Rod had pointed out these bones, of an infant. He'd been here before.
In the second cave we descended I immediately displayed the same symptoms, and I realized what had happened - and Martin spoke up to report he had the same breathing difficulty. The wet limestone in the enclosed space had reacted and displaced oxygen with carbon dioxide! Again, I had to fight to get out of there, but I was bloody happy I wasn't going to croak right there and then. On the drive up Rod had mentioned the possibility of "bad air." I thought he had meant an odor. We wouldn't be able to go deeper without oxygen tanks.
On another day booked off for spelunking, Sir Rod took me to Hintok POW camp which he had once owned and where he had built a lovely home but which he had to sell to support his magnificent obsession, the Death Railway Museum. Hintok is now, ironically, an up market resort with safari-like tents to recreate in a small manner the original POW tents. Here Rod over 5.5 months excavated a vertical cave next to the site of the POW mess hall used as a dump pit, discovering many of the artifacts in his museum from toothbrushes to regimental badges tossed down there.
This is the museum incidentally, on the edge of the cemetery where Rod also serves as War Graves Commissioner. It was because of his work keeping the history alive that the Dutch queen knighted him.
Below the historic horizon of the POWs, he discovered pottery and Neolithic tools which sparked his other obsession, beside the railway: early man, which has lived in this region for an incredible million years.
This substantial tool was deeper, at the Mesolith level.
There was more. These are WW-II tins (left) and bones (right) Rod left in situ on a ledge while excavating. The .357 is a toy, probably lost down the entrance by a tourist's son. The air was fine here.
We spent the bulk of our time at the even. earlier Paleolithic level and excavated these primitive tools from that period. They may just look like broken rocks and they are - broken by humans. They're igneous - foreign to limestone caves. They had to be carried in and from a long distance. The whole region is limestone of a soft sort that doesn't make good tools.
We were two happy boys when we eventually crawled out, covered in dirt and grime. Eddie Bauer, long my favorite outfitter, gifted me with over a thousand dollars worth of expedition clothing and they're holding up just fine.
I'd even had the good fortune while ascending to slip on the wet limestone and take a healthy tumble, beautifully skinning both knees. I'd always felt as a kid that I'd had a good time if I skipped home covered in dirt and with skinned knees. Such was our success in that cave, Sir Rod and I plan to return with a water hose and a couple of helpers to clean it out and excavate deeper. We'll have the opportunity to get really muddy this time and we're both looking forward to it.
As we're looking forward to the movie too. When I made contact with Rod at the museum when I arrived, he was in discussions with Brit producer Charles Salmon who will be shooting The Railway Man in May starring Colin Firth. Charles and I chatted and it turns out he's close with two of my best friends in the movie biz, Lars Bjorck and Kevin Chisnall. And we both knew the other, loosely, would be in Kanburi at the time so it was a happy and serendipitous meeting. It'll be the first film on the Kwai since David Lean's 1957 classic. Based on the experience of still living Englishman Eric Lomax (b.1919) it's a true story of torture, hate and ultimately forgiveness and redemption for him and his torturer. There's so, so many stories along the Kwai....
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
I first trod the real Bridge on the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi just west of Bangkok in 1982 while on assignment for Thai Air.
There were few tourists then. There were actually two bridges during the war—a plain, temporary wooden structure and this nearby permanent concrete-and-steel job. Neither were with the familiar Roman chariot wheel width, but rather a narrow gauge, reflecting the Japanese mentality of the time.
I immediately was seduced by the incredible beauty and tranquility—at juxtaposed opposites to the sadistic brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army, the engineers and the Korean guards. This is the magnificent view POWs had from atop Chung Kai Cutting at which scores worked and died.
In the 16 months building the now famous bridge and the 250 miles of railway to Burma, 16,000 POWS and 100,000 coolies died horrible deaths by beatings, starvation, beriberi, pellagra, malaria, dysentery, typhus and cholera. Many lost limbs from tropical sores. The Asian coolies, with no one to coordinate sanitation and health, died like the flies that carried the cholera which swept them away by the thousands.
The square sections replaced round segments kindly removed by RAF B-24s in 1945. Patched shrapnel gouges on the concrete are visible. The movie was filmed in Sri Lanka, the Alex Guinness character very (very, very) loosely based on Colonel Phil Toosey, head of the adjoining POW camp and a genuine hero. Some scenes were modeled on events. The bridge was stolen by the Japanese from Java.
That extreme dichotomy—beauty and the beast—galvanized me and I return regularly, exploring the rail bed and, indeed, this entire fascinating region rich in history, pre-history, flora, fauna and natural attactions. But there’s ghosts everywhere. The same red sunset every night they, too, witness. The same lazy buzz of cicadas, the same coo of doves, the same rustle of bamboo. There’s ghosts….
6,982 lie here, not far away, in one of three POW cemeteries. I don’t see them anymore, the notes. Their writers are too old now to visit. I’d see them left on graves, always with a flower. “Dad, I didn’t know you, but I always missed you. Your daughter—.” The most heart breaking? “Ed, when you didn’t come home I married. He was a good man and we had two daughters and I now have four grandchildren. But I never forgot you. Myrtle.” But I never forgot you…in her ’70s she traveled all the way from England…dreams of lives that could have been…echoes of Eleanor Rigby….
They were all so young, like Myrtle’s Ed, in his early ’20s. Nowhere on the planet sobers me so as this cemetery. I was born just 13 months after this horror, for this generation , ended. And mine—through sheer luck of the draw—has enjoyed the greatest Golden Age in history. Do I feel gratitude to those who fought those German and Japanese fucks? You betcha. I’ve never met a vet since I reached awareness that I didn’t thank for making my life possible. These young soldiers were miserable slaves…at an age I was at university partying and then getting established…and I’ve been able to live an interesting life, doing what I want. I feel so damned…lucky. So undeserving….
They died in droves all along the line but some places were real killers. The Chung Kai Cutting was one—cutting the rail bed through this high limestone spur with basic tools. I purposely didn’t rotate this photo because to do so might distort, squash, the 80 foot height. The name Hellfire Pass further down the line says it all about that worst cutting of all. At least 700—69 beaten to death—died in one five kilometer stretch. The hellfire was light from torches while they slaved all night in the worst section, very similar to this picture but only longer.
“Drill-and-tap” men would slegehammer holes for TNT. To empty the bores of limestone dust they reached in with a long wire with a disk on the end. I found one of these while exploring deserted, overgrown sections of the railroad. To hold this in your hand, as with the various sized spikes and bridge bolts and bars one finds, is to hold objects radiating such dark and wretched vibrations they burn. “The last person to hold this was a POW slave living in abject misery and well could have died here,” the voice in your head screams.
Much of the railway was ripped up after the war. Thailand and Burma are blood enemies, Burma having sacked the Siamese capital city of Ayutthaya 250 years ago. The rails you find all over Thailand used as telephone poles—a thoroughly perplexing sight when first seen. ‘Krupp 1896’ some say.
Unlike Germany, which finally acknowledged and seeks atonement for its own barbarism—making it possible to forgive—the Japanese stolidly, stoically, stubbornly, ignorantly and arrogantly refuse to do so. And I blame the men. I’ve been to over 60 countries and I’ve never seen such an enormous gulf between male and female sub-cultures. Generally speaking, the women are the finest, most sensitive and feminine on the planet; the men, the most ignorant, clod-minded, arrogant and racist.
When I see Japanese tourists, like these asses, on the bridge laughing and happily snapping pictures, one part of me is so disgusted I want to throw them into the Kwai. Yet, another part can’t blame them. The historical fact of Japanese utter abrogation of humanitarianism is swept under the futon by their own government, their own leaders, their own media and education system.
In effect, the male elders are keeping what they did—the raping and murder and numerous massacres they delighted in from Nanking to Manila to Hong Kong to Singapore and many more—from the women like they have always done. The WW-II generation responsible doesn’t think they did anything wrong. But how can they when Hirohito himself—with whom they identified so firmly they’d die for, as did the Kamikazes—wasn’t prosecuted? MacArthur fucked up. Another—unsullied—member of the royal family should have replaced him and he should have swung with Tojo. It’s a highly complex, deeply self-brainwashed culture living in profound denial, with the Japanese abhorrence to losing face playing a role. How does one forgive, trust and respect a nation like that?
Anyway, let’s finish with a shot of a pretty Japanese girl. She’s an innocent. But him? He doesn’t know it but he’s wrapped in the male conspiracy of ignorance, arrogance and silence imposed from above. The Japanese, by refusing to recognize and deal with their enormous historic evil streak, leave it lurking just below the surface, waiting to erupt, to repeat itself.
*Postscript: Dec 8, 2011 the Japanese formally apologized to Canada for its treatment of our troops captured and interned at Hong Kong. Canada accepted. The Japanese seem slowly to be moving in the right direction.
Monday, Dec. 20, 2010
This is something to make a writer’s day! I got a call from Saskatoon Tourism informing me they’d like to purchase 140 copies of Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives: Today’s Explorers Recall the Youthful Dream that Launched their Remarkable Lives and would I be so kind as to annotate and autograph them? Well, of course! That’s over $4600.00 worth of books! And more readers! By the time I finished signing them—it took an hour and half—my wrist was as sore as a pubescent boy’s with a porn magazine. They’re to be given as gifts to attendees of the Western Retail Lumber Association Convention being held here in Toontown, as we fondly term Saskatoon, January 14-17. As if this wasn’t enough, as a thank you gift Saskatoon Tourism generously gave me a great, outdoors blanket made of a soft. Patagonia-like material. It’s something I can really use solo canoeing when I don’t have The Dragon Lady to keep me warm in my sleeping bag.
Thank you Saskatoon Tourism!
Photo: Shauna Morrison, Saskatoon Tourism
Sunday, December 19, 2010
I’ve been invited to act as an ambassador to the Robert Bateman Get To Know Your Wild Neighbours website which has been up for ten years, encouraging young people to get involved with Nature. Endorsers include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jane Goodall and Steve Nash so I’m in reasonably good company.
I know Bob through The Explorers Club, he contributed to my Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives book, and we’ve met at The Explorers Club Salt Spring Symposium hosted by Pat and Rosemarie Keough, close friends of his as well as ours. He’s a very nice, unassuming, quiet man, totally unaffected by his enormous success and fame as the world’s preeminent boreal wildlife artist. We share an abiding love of Nature, and anything I can do to fight Nature Deficit Disorder, I’ll do it—so I’m very happy, indeed honoured, to be invited.
I also contacted my buddy Les Stroud—another major outdoors guy if there ever was one (and the reference in my last posting)—and Les is delighted to lend his name as well. The website is at http://www.gettoknow.ca/us/
"I remember the exact moment—I was a boy of ten—when I first fell in love. I was in the bush in northeast Saskatchewan near Carrot River, the small town I was brought up in. It's backed into boreal forest sweeping up to the Tree Line. I could hear her soft voice soothing through the pines, smelled her fresh fragrance. She was tantalizing, dressed in vivid greens and blue. While other loves have come and gone my lifelong affair with Nature has only deepened. And I know no better way to find my way into her revitalizing company than by canoe. I encourage young people to join Scouting—the best experience of my youth—and a canoe club. I enjoy having youth on my annual cost-sharing brigades onto northern Saskatchewan's 100,000 pristine lakes and rivers. That way I can introduce you to my special girlfriend too, and join me in celebrating the International Year of Forests."
Jason Schoonover
Adventurer, Author, Ethnologist & Fellow of The Explorers Club
Wednesday December 1, 2010
On my annual jaunt up to my old home town of Carrot River, pop 1200, in northeastern Saskatchewan in October to do some bird hunting...an excuse to visit old friends and haunts...I serendiptiously ran into the local reporter who wished do a profile on me. This, and an article I offered them gratis on a fascinating local mystery, just came out. I've had several profiles done over the years but this is the best and certainly the most comprehensive. the only complaint I have is the pictures of some old guy they substituted for me:
Carrot River adventurer lives life to the fullest
By Denise Bokinac
Although people often grow up dreaming of a life filled with adventure, one of travelling the globe to learn about different cultures and people while exploring untamed lands and discovering new and exciting worlds, the sad fact is that few ever actually succeed in living such a lifestyle, instead growing up to become mainstream adults who go off to work their mundane jobs each day in order to support their families.
Jason Schoonover, a self described adventurer, writer, ethnologist and real estate investor with Carrot River roots, is anything but normal. He is one of the few who managed to make his dream a reality, travelling around the world to explore exotic countries, surviving more than a few close calls, meeting and becoming friends with many of the most well-known adventurers of our time such as Buzz Aldrin and Les Stroud, and being elected as a fellow in the exclusive Explorers Club.
Growing up in Carrot River in the 1950’s, Schoonover was a typical boy whose imagination allowed him to become the characters from his favourite movies. In the nearby bush he built huts and snared rabbits while pretending, thanks to his ingenuity and love of National Geographic magazines, that he was in some of the most far-flung, remote places in the world.
Then one day he read an article about the Explorers Club in Reader’s Digest that made him realize that he could do more than just dream about seeing these places for himself.
“I remember it was the summer of 1958, when I was 12 years-old, and I can still feel the breeze on my cheek,” he described. “I had two epiphanies after I had read that article, which absolutely galvanized me because suddenly I realized that you can live a real life of adventure, it wasn’t just something on the screen that was fiction and make believe – you could actually live the adventure.”
He made two vows to himself on that warm summer day. First he promised to live the most adventurous life that he could, which has led him on some amazing journeys, and second he vowed that one day he would become a member of the Explorers Club, which only has about 3,000 members worldwide.
In 1986 Schoonover was elected as fellow in the prestigious club. “All of the explorers and adventurers of the last century are members of this exclusive club - that is why it is so important to me.”
His goals, and eventual achievements, didn’t stop there. Although he hated school with a passion, Schoonover realized when he was 12 that he loved writing and decided that one day he would become a novelist. He credits his Grade 7 teacher for discovering and encouraging the talent that allowed him to put his imagination to use and eventually led him to study English Literature and History at Simon Fraser University outside Vancouver.
“These are the roots, the education I got at the public high school was first rate,” he noted. “This town taught me a lot, especially the outdoors. Living two blocks away from the bush, I spent my whole youth outdoors.”
After university Schoonover took a job in radio, starting in 1970 as a disc jockey at CKOM in Saskatoon. Two years later he moved to CFQC where, as music director, he worked on the Sunday morning show ‘Best by Request’ with Wal and Den (famous morning show co-hosts Wally Stambuck and Denny Carr) until he left radio in 1977. The show was huge hit and soon became the biggest radio show in Saskatchewan, commanding 82 per cent of the available listening audience.
“It was the best job I ever had,” he remembers. “It was my university of the media, once I came out of there I had my PHD.”
Those were busy years for Schoonover. Along with the radio job he freelanced for newspapers, magazines, TV and other radio stations, honing his skills in all areas of journalism. He also produced a number of beauty pageants, something he was surprised to find he enjoyed.
In 1975, he was given the amazing opportunity to write, produce and direct John Diefenbaker’s 80th birthday party gala at the Centennial Auditorium in Saskatoon, an extravaganza that involved over 300 performers and personnel.
Throughout this period Schoonover was always looking ahead towards his ultimate goal of travelling the world in search of adventures. He scrimped and saved every penny, investing his earnings into Saskatoon real estate with the idea of eventually being free of the conventional working world to live out his dream.
In November of 1977 the dream became a reality when he quit his job to become what he describes as “gainfully unemployed ever since.”
During his first solo trek around the world in 1978, Schoonover discovered that he could easily pay his way by sending travel articles to major newspapers in both Canada and the United States.
“I was continually gaining my experience as a writer, continually expanding my bounds and skills and developing what gifts I have,” he explained.
In 1982, Schoonover moved to Thailand where he fulfilled his dream of writing a book, an adventure thriller called the Bangkok Collection which was released in hardbound under that name in Canada, then internationally as Thai Gold, and finally out of India and Nepal as Nepal Gold.
“That book now has had three different titles,” he noted with a chuckle.
Since then, he has written two other adventure thrillers and two non-fiction books including the inspirational Adventurous Dreams, Adventurous Lives, in which 120 living explorers, such as Buzz Aldrin, Les Stroud and Don Walsh recall the ‘aha’ turning point that led to their exciting lives.
Schoonover fell in love with Thailand and continues to reside there during the winter months, explaining that he hates the cold Saskatchewan winters with a passion.
“I’ve lived in Thailand for 30 years. I love that country; it is so exotic you can do anything you want as long as you don’t hurt anybody else. People are smiling and the food is fantastic,”
Summer is a different story. That is when he and his partner, Su Hattori, come home to Saskatoon, where he continues the adventures on a more local front by leading two to three canoe brigades in Northern Saskatchewan each year.
“We’ve got the best canoeing on the plant boy, 100,000 lakes and rivers up there. It’s pristine, you can drink right out of most of the rivers and the fishing is fantastic,” he remarked.
It was during his first trip around the world that Schoonover discovered and became fascinated with the Devil Dancers of Sri Lanka. After being allowed to observe one of the all-night ceremonies, Schoonover realized that museums would love to have an exhibit about such things. He put together a 97-piece ethnological collection complete with documentation and sound recordings and quickly sold it to the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology.
That was the start of yet another career and in the years since, using Bangkok as a home base, he has spent his winters travelling throughout south east Asia collecting anthropological objects of different culture groups and selling them to museums all over the world including the Smithsonian Institution, the Sankokan in Tenri Nara Japan, Canada’s Museum of Civilization and of course, the UBC’s Museum of Anthropology.
Last January, after telling Surviorman’s Les Stroud about the Devil Dancers, he agreed to assist him in filming a production about the cult for his new show Les Stroud Beyond Survival.
“My job was to fix the whole shoot” he describes. “I organized everything – the Devil Dancer’s, the helicopters, the hotels, the transportation, the visas, I set up the whole shoot. Another word for it is field producer.”
He and Hattori, who worked on the segment as the production assistant, flew in about a week before the rest of the eight-man crew to ensure everything was set up. They spent two and a half weeks of what he describes as “very intense shooting” that turned out to be full of last minute changes as various problems arose.
“There’s things always going wrong and you have to solve the problems, you just can’t try to solve the problems, you have to solve them,” he remembers.
The most serious problem they had was losing the use of the house he had arranged to have the ceremony at just a few hours before the shoot when the owner’s grandmother died. But, after a few reassurances from Stroud and a bit of searching they found an even better place.
The segment, entitled The Devil Dancers of Sri Lanka, was chosen as the first episode in the new series and aired this past September 5 on Outdoor Life Network. It can also be seen online at www.lesstroud.ca/beyondsurvival.
“It covered all the bases, it had all the elements in it in spades and I knew that,” said Schoonover with a note of excitement in his voice.
The beauty he has discovered during his various treks through over 60 countries will remain in Schoonover’s mind forever. Places such as Sri Lanka, Turkey, Afghanistan and Nepal, where he has made the hike to the Mount Everest base camp twice.
“It’s just a mind-blowing country,” he said, describing Nepal. “You’re trekking in the biggest landscape on the planet; it’s just awesome, gorgeous, overwhelming in its magnitude. And the people, the culture there, the Nepalese/Tibetan culture is just so attractive. They are such an intelligent people, such a good people. Everybody impresses you to an individual, which I wouldn’t say I would find here in my own country.”
Of course his adventures have included more than a few close calls, such as the time he was charged by a bull elephant while on a trek through a national park in Thailand.
Telling the story in a way that makes the listener feel as if they were there, Schoonover explained that he was travelling on a trail surrounded by huge banyan trees, about eight to 12 feet in diameter, and as he came around a curve he could see the top of an elephant washing itself in a stream that was about 15 feet from the trail. At that point the jungle was so thick it would have been difficult to find another route, so Schoonover decided to continue on the trail. As he came closer the elephant - not a small cow as he originally had thought but a huge bull with two large, dangerous tusks - came out of the stream bed towards him.
“Man I turned and was outta there so fast,” he laughed, describing the run through the twisting, turning trail. It didn’t take him long to get away, but the curiosity that feeds his adventurous soul made him decide to go back for another look.
“I snuck back quietly, came to that last big tree, peeked around and he was standing right there about 20 feet away. Right away his truck came up and bam, I was outta there and that was the end of that trek,” he described.
Another experience he remembers was the time when he was scuba diving in the Philippines and his tank regulator gave out when he was about 90 feet underwater. Faced with the choice of going down another eight feet to his buddy, a local Pilipino, or heading to the surface, he chose the latter, making his way slowly while letting the air out of his lungs so they did not expand and burst.
“That was an interesting experiment,” he chuckles. “I learned a lot about saving yourself diving. That was a close call.”
Schoonover said that another close call made him realize how happy he is with the life he has lived.
He recalled a recent plane trip that was full of turbulence. While everybody on the plane was terrified, thinking that it was going to crash, he realized that he wasn’t worried at all.
“I was thinking, ‘well, if this is it I’ve lived a really good life. I’ve done everything I wanted to and I’m fine with it. It’ll be quick,’” he noted in a quiet voice. “I was at peace with the whole thing because I have lived an interesting life. We all have to go sometime and I don’t have any regrets.”
Jason Schoonover has lived a life that most of us can only dream about. The adventurer was raised in Carrot River and still manages to come back for a visit on a regular basis.
August 30, 2010
This ran in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix a few days ago and included a small head shot of me on the front page, no less. I've had several articles done on me over the years but this one is definitely proving to be the most popular. I can't believe how many calls and emails I've received. I'm sure it's because of the connection with Les. His fan base is very solid and loyal. Also, Cam is one of the best writers on the paper and I've been a fan for years. I was very pleased when the paper phoned and said they were having him interview me.
Survivorman's logistics men
Saskatoon's Jason Schoonover didn't just survive his adventure with Les Stroud, he thrived.
"I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It was very enriching,'' Schoonover said this week. He was the local "fixer" in what turned out to be the lead-off episode of Les Stroud's new series Beyond Survival. It's a follow-up to Stroud's Survivorman series, which ran for three seasons on OLN in Canada and Discovery Channel in the U.S.
The new show takes Stroud to far-flung places in search of indigenous people, documenting their survival skills before the outside world makes their cultures extinct.
Schoonover was responsible for all the travel and accommodations, from renting helicopters to dealing with passport issues. His local knowledge was crucial; he's wintered in Bangkok for 35 years and made seven trips to Sri Lanka.
"I love spring, summer and fall in Saskatoon. They're the best in the world. But I just can't stand winter," Schoonover laughs.
He's known Stroud since 2004 when Schoonover approached him to join The Explorer's Club. More recently, he suggested Stroud check out the Devil Dance exorcism in Sri Lanka, "one of my major interests in all my life in that area." The dance stems from the belief that a sickness is the work of outside forces that have to be warded off.
"It's a very dramatic, all-night exorcist ritual," says Schoonover. "It was just a given that this was a natural for the show."
A crew of 11 spent more than two weeks shooting the episode. There are actually three Saskatoon connections, Schoonover points out. His partner Su Hattori was a field assistant. And Bryan Potvin (of Northern Pikes fame) was in charge of sound and second camera. Stroud's first career was in the music industry, including a stint at MuchMusic when it was just starting. He's collaborated with the Toronto-dwelling Potvin and the Pikes on music projects.
"In the end, the shoot was fantastic. It has all the elements," says Schoonover.
But the preparations didn't always go smoothly. Schoonover spent hours finding the perfect household for the Devil Dance, only to lose it at the last minute due to a death in the family.
"So my blood pressure goes right up to the level of the coconut palms."
With little time left, he managed to find an even better site.
The series debuts Friday in the U.S. and early September in Canada. It's a departure from Survivorman, which featured Stroud alone with the camera. This time he has a crew around him. But the intimate feel is very similar, says Schoonover.
"There are going to be a lot of parallels."
He describes Stroud as bright, sharp, focused, incredibly disciplined and genuinely interested in the people he visits.
"I was impressed with how respectful he is to the indigenous cultures. He really is an anthropologist at heart."
Schoonover, who read the final script only a few days ago, can't wait to see the edited episode for the first time.
"I've been wanting to do a documentary on this for 30 years."
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