New book puts the lens on historic N.S. filmmaker Margaret Perry

Nova Scotia filmmaker Margaret Perry is pictured. (Source: Nova Scotia Archives)

A Nova Scotia artist known as one of Canada’s most prolific early filmmakers is having the focus put on her story.

Margaret Perry’s (1905-1998) works and life are being collected and told in a new book by researcher Jennifer VanderBurgh, an associate professor of film and media studies in the Department of English Language and Literature at Saint Mary’s University.

“I’ve written a few chapters about her development as an artist, looking at her early work. Where I’m focusing now is actually looking at the films themselves and seeing themes that exist across the body of her work and what they say about the value of everyday labour, about the way in which Nova Scotia offers lots of opportunities for people to really explore and connect with the land in various ways,” VanderBurgh says.

A widow and mother of one son, Perry made a living creating promotional films for the Nova Scotia Film Bureau about the province. Between 1945 and 1969, Perry produced more than 50 films. As head of the province’s film unit, her roles included director, editor, camera operator, script writer and more.

“There was never a position like this before Margaret Perry held it, and there hasn’t been after in the same way,” explains VanderBurgh. “The idea that Margaret Perry was alone as a women filmmaker in non-theatrical film. Perry comes out of a very particular moment of wartime film production.”

From topics like fishing to the Apple Blossom Festival, the short films’ primary purpose was to encourage tourism and highlight local industries, landscapes and art.

“Those films would've been shown in classrooms, but they also circulated at trade shows and at exhibitions. Some of them were seen by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people over the course of their circulation,” VanderBurgh says.

Associate professor Jennifer VanderBurgh is pictured. (Source: Jennifer VanderBurgh)

Roughly 80 years later, VanderBurgh says the films capture a moment in history.

“These are things that other people weren't paying attention to. So, for example, footage of how to repair nets, how to bait herring in a particular way, how librarians were looking after books on the Bookmobile in its early days,” says VanderBurgh. “She was paying attention to women's labour, to everyday practices of life in the region. And so these are really important records that we have because of her films and because of her part, the particular lens that she was using to tell stories about Nova Scotia, they also really tell the story of the way that Nova Scotia was promoting itself to itself and to the world at a moment in time.”

Many of those films, as well as her personal effects like diary entries, have been digitized and are available online for public viewing by Nova Scotia Archives.

Margaret Perry's diary is pictured. (Source: Nova Scotia Archives)

“I think the films themselves are absolutely beautiful,” she says. “They're shot on Kodachrome and Ektachrome film stocks, so they're super colorful and wonderful, but they also are really wonderful records of Nova Scotia at a moment. They document the way that things looked, things that have since disappeared, they're incredible records of that. They’ve become important cultural records,” VanderBurgh says.

Perry also worked as a photographer and wrote short, illustrated articles for newspapers and magazines.

“Margaret Perry was one of the first two women camera operators at the National Film Board, but there were directors, producers, and script writers who she worked with. She maintained those relationships with the women filmmakers that she met at the National Film Board over the course of her career. And that's another thing that I've been exploring in my research, the way that she's maintained these relationships and asked her fellow women filmmakers for advice over the time that she was working in Nova Scotia,” VanderBurgh says.

Perry was pregnant with her son when her husband, Stanley Perry, was killed in a car accident in 1936. The heartbreaking details are revealed in diary entries.

Margaret Perry's husband Stan is pictured. (Source: Nova Scotia Archives)

“Ultimately, she had to find a way to make a living. So she turned to photography initially as a hobby, but sort of turned that into a way to make some money for herself and her son,” VanderBurgh says. “She would take photographs, and then ultimately, she learned how to develop them herself.”

VanderBurgh has written half the book, with the hopes of releasing it within the next two years. It follows the October 2023 release of “What Television Remembers: Artifacts and Footprints of TV in Toronto”.

“Part of the book is kind of a chronology of the development of her artistic practice and her career. The other half of the book is really about the films themselves. You know, looking, looking to see what kinds of things they communicate about the region, the way that they frame the region, what their concerns are and what their, what their central themes are,” VanderBurgh says. 

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