It's official.

Thanks to the faith of some good people at SCN and Image Pacific, we are headed to Saskatchewan in less than two weeks to finally start shooting. This will be a reunion of sorts with my Director of Photography, Jason Wessel, also a displaced prairie boy. We're heading into the good ol' heart of darkness, that place in Saskatchewan where almost everybody leaves... the farm.

Something like three quarters of all young people leave rural areas and only a few of them go back. It's been happening since the Great Depression. "There's nothing to do," we say. But something in me started twitching four years ago when I moved to Toronto.

A recurring dream: standing, alone, in a field full of barley, the green heads swaying in the wind. The smell of fresh air, of vast fields of green releasing oxygen into the air...

Toronto is such an indulgent place. Great food, the perpetual rush of pedestrians and streetcars, incredible wealth all around, the convenience of knowing I can order a sandwich or 1000 full colour business cards at 4am. No matter how much you have or don't have, there is always room above you. It's easy to take for granted.

When that dream started calling me, I started to believe I was missing out on something really important. I felt that old people had the answers. The things old people remember first-hand are being forgotten. I felt especially guilty of disregarding them.

Only 75 years ago, people were on the brink of famine in this country, and yet we seem to have so little regard for others in the same predicament today. It would be so easy to slip into another Great Depression. The scale of that trajedy, looming majestic in the minds of these ninety year olds, is nothing compared to what's being experienced in Africa. Should that happen here, would we have the wisdom, skills, and resources to stand on our own? Only the old people could tell me.

So I quit my job and flew west, talked to my grandparents and my 90 year old Uncle Vernon, to my 89-year-old neighbour Tom Campbell, and to talk to other elders in the First Nations. We're also talking to young people like me, except that these people have stayed and built something at home. The people of the Canadian Prairies hold a secret, and I want it.

Over the last two years I've realized that as much as anything, this is an internal journey for me. I want to know why I had to leave the farm, why the place that calls to me so strongly just isn't my home.

Jason said to me once that the story of Saskatchewan is the story of all Canada. This year, we're going back in search of that story.