Nanaimo Station

“A collage of family archive narrow gauge footage embracing/refuting the ideas of nostalgia and lost innocence, the contemporary commingling in our minds of the romantic past and easy irony. We can’t go back. The home we search for is gone. The kinder, gentler, magazine we wish we could live in never existed at all. We are lost. Hurrah. “This footage, including my first steps, was filmed by my namesake, Clive Brown, a friend of the family, our adopted ‘Uncle Clive’, and a west coast fisherman. Nanaimo, British Columbia, is where my family first attempted to set up a home in Canada after arriving from Dublin. They moved, for work reasons, to Victoria two years later. As a result, Nanaimo took on a useful mythical status for my family, becoming the place before complexity and sadness.” Music by Christine Fellows.