Ha Ling’s story starts at seven in the morning and ends one hundred years later.
It begins in 1896, when the Chinese cook working for the Canadian Pacific Railway made a $50 bet that he could climb the nearby mountain in under ten hours. Ha Ling woke early in the morning. He scaled the perilous mountain known as the Beehive. He planted his flag, and was back by lunch.
Nobody believed him.
So Ha Ling took them up the mountain and showed them the small flag fluttering in the wind. He planted a second one, this time big enough that you could see it from town. He didn't want to prove his point again. Ha had done it. He had made the march. He had won the bet. In honour of his achievement, the locals named the mountain after him.
And in doing so, sparked one hundred years of controversy.
The locals named it Chinaman Mountain. They put a racial epithet on their maps and reduced the man the mountain is named after to a slur.
One hundred years later, the residents of a small Alberta town gathered in a hall to debate the name; a debate about heritage versus hatred and the meaning of a name. This is where our story picks up again.
Ha Ling climbs the Beehive is a film about how we name history. It’s about a man who climbed a mountain and a town embroiled in a debate that mirrors our current moment of historical reevaluation. All over the world people are reflecting on the history we choose to honour in the names of streets, neighbourhoods, teams and statues. Ha Ling Climbs the Beehive is about a new idea through the lens of an old adventure; the story of a cook who climbed a mountain twice just to prove his point, and a people who had to fight to have theirs heard.
We’re proposing Ha Ling’s Climbs the Beehive as a 45 minute documentary film, combining interviews, narration, and nature/outdoor documentary footage of the mountain.
In our first of four segments, we lay out the legend of Ha Ling’s bet. We set the scene, looking at what life was like in Canada in 1896 for someone like Ha, and establish our own journey out to Canmore to recreate the climb. Our first segment is about the legend itself, and the context in which that story took place.
In our second segment we climb the mountain. We follow Ha as he wakes at dawn, and trace the route he took with our guide. We follow our imaginary Ha to the mountain peak, and present a moment of triumph. This is our adventure segment. But, as we approach the turn into the third segment, we introduce what will prove to be the conflict. Ha makes the climb. They honour the bet. They name the mountain after him.
And we all know what they name it. The second segment ends with us teasing our jump into the future and the true conflict of the film.
Which brings us into our third segment, moving forward to 1997, the year a Canmore resident named Roger Mah Poy publicly challenged the century old name. This segment is a moment of reflection, where we focus on the fight over the name, trying to understand what both sides were thinking. We outline the conflict that took place in Canmore, between those who wanted to change the name and the 1,500 strong petition of those who didn’t; between those who viewed the name as a historical artifact and those who saw it as a document of the life of a very real person and an offensive one at that. We speak with residents who were there about what happened in that room.
That tension is the focus of our fourth and closing segment in which we zoom out, and look at this discussion in the world today. Without having to travel even south of the border, we drive down the road to Edmonton where the names of neighbourhoods, sports teams and statues are all under contention. Ha Ling was one man who won a bet, but his story speaks to the tension we’re hopefully able to examine in this film; at what point does honouring the past become a disservice to the present? It’s with this question that the film ends.
This is a film fundamentally about two people: Ha Ling and Roger Mah Poy. Ha Ling’s story is told through the historical re-enactment of us climbing the mountain. It’s a second hand story told by the local climbing experts and historians we intend on interviewing for the first two segments. He is a character, but also a subject. This is a film about his name, but we want to try and put people in the shoes of his experience as person.
Our second character, and the focal point of the third and fourth segment is Roger, the person widely credited with leading the charge to change the name. Roger's homecoming to Canmore provides our insight into the culminating conflict in 1997; he is our way in. His recounting of the 1997 conflict, his family's connection to the region, and his personal philosophy surrounding names and placemaking constitute our core themes.
The subject of the legend, and the person who fought to have his namesake honoured — these are our two core characters.
Why this? Why Now? —
Ha Ling isn’t a historical anecdote to us, it’s a hometown folk tale. People in Alberta climb the easy route on Ha Ling during trips to Rockies all the time. It’s a regional landmark. It’s a story we’ve all heard, but can’t remember where we heard it. Ha Ling is also an oral traditional that’s never been cemented. It’s a story with rich, evocative natural visuals, a compelling historical context, and a fascinating character that, though the audience never gets to see, we think will come to empathize with as we recreate the hike. The “Why this” is that’s a uniquely Albertan adventure. We think we can capture that adventure in something that’s beautiful and more than a little thrilling.
But that’s only half of the story that we’re proposing. It’s the other half that brings us to the “why now.”
Ha Ling’s is a regional story about the past that speaks to a global conversation about the here and now. It’s a dialogue that’s been reaching a fever pitch, and will continue to dominate the cultural conversation in coming years. "Is removing monuments and changing names facing up to the past, forgetting it, or hiding it?" The people of Canmore had to ask that question in 1997, about a story that happened in 1897, that shines a light on what’s happening in 2017. The “Why Now” is that we want to tell a story about where we’re from, as a way of understanding the change that’s happening all around us. Any good story that helps us understand how the world works is always worth telling.