THE LAND

While walking through the landscape the camera explores the so called Canadian tobacco belt of Southwestern Ontario in three chapters. In the footsteps of the first European settlers on the American continent, the viewer discovers how the historical process of colonisation, cultivation and exploitation of the land is still being reflected in present day reality. In this particular region the tobacco plant was part of that process. Taken out of its native context and its original use by indigenous people, it became part of an industry developed by European migrants, of which many were Belgian, during the twentieth century. The film addresses how throughout history the land got cultivated, how cultures vanished, how identities faded or shifted, and how colonial powers still are resonating today. The audience is taken from native chants and seemingly unspoiled nature to the Vanden Bussche Irrigation Learning Centre where Marc Vanden Bussche, as son of a Belgian pioneer, explains about the different techniques they use to work and improve the land. The film ends at a tobacco plantation where the Jamaican seasonal labourers, speaking their creole language, have picked up some remaining Flemish words transmitted by the farmer of Belgian descent which they're working for now.