By Dan Hicks

Op-Ed Commentary

Despite the super-exciting allure of Captain Marvel (PG) debuting at our local cinema, or repeat viewings of either Alita – Battle Angel (14A) or Lego Movie 2 (G), playing into their fourth and fifth weeks respectively, many Cranbrook cineastes took the road less traveled over March 7 to 9 and viewed some of the seven adult-themed films of the 22nd annual Sunrise Rotary Rockies Film Festival at our Key City Theatre.

Of the five Rotary films which I saw personally, the distressingly dire enviro-documentary Anthropocene was the only one which I considered to be a must-see movie. Three were nevertheless worthwhile, and one was, given its USA accolades, disappointingly marginal.

The Woman Who Loves Giraffes feature was indeed worth seeing. The precariousness of these peculiar creatures on our planet is only slightly better than that of our own now interned Kootenay mountain caribou (odd ungulated entities in their own right).

The Woman Who Loves Giraffes recounts Torontonian Anne Innis Dagg’s 1956-57 yearlong African adventure as a guest of the vast Fleur de Lys Citrus Farm (citrus and cattle) near Kruger National Park in South Africa. She was the first zoologist (U of T: BA Biology 55 & MA Genetics 56) to study giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis) as they wandered about freely in their natural habitat, our tower-necked mammalian answer to the brontosaurus, they had infatuated her as a child visitor to Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo.

An exuberant young woman and an astute observer, she was often incredulous as she documented their intriguing heretofore-unknown authentically wild behaviour, such as the bulls being more predisposed to mount each other than they were the cows.

Her African giraffe observing is nostalgically recreated through vivid 16 mm colour movies; camera and some fine filming contributions courtesy of sympathetic and facilitative farm manager Alexander Matthew.

Her mostly reliable green 1950 British Ford Prefect (Model E493A, 1949-53) she named “Camelo,” from Camelopardalis – the circumpolar giraffe constellation circling Polaris in our northern night sky. Besides mobility and safety, Camelo’s pedestrian character allowed Anne to situate herself amongst the giraffes and elicit nothing more than mild curiosity (much apart from the excitement that a Rover, Rolls, or Jaguar would have generated).

Back in Toronto, and happily married to her fiancé and fellow tennis player – physicist Ian Dagg, Anne had three children, two sons and a daughter (finally). She received her Doctorate in Animal Behaviour from the University of Waterloo in 1967, but in the 1970s, despite her many published works, became discouraged by her failure to secure tenure at either the University of Guelph or Wilfred Laurier University. Dismissed by their patriarchal Ivy League-aspirational cliques, she sought redress from the Ontario Human Rights Commission – also unsuccessfully. Rediscovered in 2010, Anne was invited to the inaugural conference of the International Association of Giraffe Care Professionals in Phoenix and received its Pioneer Award.

Returning once again to Africa as an octogenarian – to Kenya in 2013 and South Africa in 2015, she learned onsite firsthand of present day giraffe studies and conservation measures.

As for her halcyon haunt of yore – the Fleur de Lys Farm, although her main farmhouse abode remained (along with her antique manual typewriter) – obliging Alexander had long since trekked into a golden Transvaal sunset. The farm’s once extensive lands had been subdivided and suburbanized; but most sadly, repeating a common global pattern, in their now constricted habitat, her beloved giraffes had diminished in number to a remnant population.

But for a while longer, the old acreage savanna woodland hosts a few of these treetop-reaching ruminants, who will stretch their long necks gracefully upward and dine on the tasty leaves and fruit awaiting them high in the wide-crowned marula, while such southern Africa signature trees yet grace the bushveld skyline.

“How green was my valley then, and the valley of them that have gone.” – From the book likewise titled, Richard Llewellyn, 1939.

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