‘Brantford Expositor’ World travelers tell their tales article
Published on Friday, February 3rd, 2012, under Media
NEWS BRANTFORD-BRANT –
By Susan Gamble, Brantford Expositor –
Friday, February 3, 2012 –
World travellers tell their tales –
Once you’ve travelled the world, living life in front of a camera for three years, it’s hard to imagine where to go next in order to challenge yourself and keep things fresh.
So Scott Wilson looked down.
“Water makes up 70% of the planet and there are a lot of places that haven’t been touched yet,” says the star of the highly successful OLN show, Departures.
Which explains why he and co-creator Andre Dupuis have spent the past 14 months getting pruney in waters around the world, from those close to home and those surrounding the most remote spots.
“This has been an incredible year and our 13 episodes represent a wide variety of what we’ve been seeing.”
While Departures was built around the idea of two high school buddies (Scott and Justin Lukach, who both grew up in Brantford) backpacking around the world, Scott’s new show, Descending, takes a more adult look at things.
“We’re trying to mature as we’re growing older,” says Scott. “Descending isn’t some drunken backpackers party.”
While some of their fans will be devastated to see Scott and Justin go their separate ways, Scott emphasizes that there was no big fight or decision to part forever.
“We were in danger of being on cruise control so there was an agreement to explore things in a few side projects. Justin had certain dreams and aspirations and we agreed to work on other things.”
While Scott and Andre descend into the depths, Justin and two others have taken to the sky with a helicopter and a cineplex camera with a two-mile zoom on their own project.
During a visit over Christmas, before Justin took off for Hawaii, the three Departures dudes met up to reminisce about their passion for travel and we “realized it’s still alive.”
So while there may be another season featuring the travelling trio, Scott is hoping that many Departures fans -and there were about 30,000 of them following the crew on FaceBook at last count -will transfer allegiance to Descending.
Inspired by some rookie dives, Scott and Andre, accompanied by a new Kiwi co-host and experienced diver, visited oceans, lakes and rivers to find some of the most interesting underwater adventures they could. Sharks, whales, Manta rays and bizarre underwater creatures are all featured in the shows.
“It’s in the same vein as Departures in that it’s a grass-roots, average-man travel program but this time in water,” says Scott. He notes that most of the underwater footage out there is either professionals exploring things from a mostly scientific angle or National Geographic- type beauty films that don’t have much of a personal touch.
And the guys behind the show are bringing to the mix the extensive lessons learned on the Gemini-winning Departures.
They’re currently scurrying like mad in post-production and OLN has announced it will be premiering the new show on Feb. 19 at 9 p.m. It will run every Sunday at 9 p.m. after that. And you can still catch reruns of Departures all over the dial, plus deleted scenes on YouTube.
Living out your travels in front of a camera brings its own challenges and rewards, notes Scott.
“It’s been thrilling to say the least. There have been some near misses and some crazy adventures. We get emails from Brazil and Indonesia and people come up and talk to me in the grocery store because they feel like they know me.
“Even more humbling, a couple of months ago a security guard at the Hong Kong airport said ‘You’re Scott from Departures!’ That’s incredible.”
Despite all the travel and fame, coming home to Ontario is the “dessert” he says.
“After four years on the road you relish home and family a lot more. When I come home I realize this is where I’m meant to be. I’m Canadian.”
. . .
We last had sad news about former Brantford resident Eivind Rynning.
The former president of Hartmann North America, who lived here from 2002 to 2004 and owned property until last year, was taken ill while chasing his dream. Eivind wanted to ski to the South Pole with a team of Norwegians, recreating the journey Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen made 100 years ago.
But a translation of a Norwegian blog indicated the Eivind was airlifted from the Antarctica coast due to medical reasons.
It was true -but here’s the rest of the story.
Ill with a terrible cold, Eivind simply couldn’t keep up with the team as it logged 30 kilometres of skiing each day, dragging 85 kilograms of gear.
Instead, he joined another expedition that headed directly to Union Glacier, where Eivind had 10 days to get better and await his original team.
“I used this time to recuperate and skied almost 270 kilometres in 10 days, which is a new record for Union Glacier. All the other expeditions came past Union Glacier so I got to know all the members. I even got to ski with some of them on the glaciers surrounding the camp.”
Each evening in the camp, there were experts lecturing on various aspects of Antarctica and, by the time Eivind’s team arrived, he was in better shape than any of them.
“We flew in to within 200 km of the pole on Dec. 3 and started skiing the same day. Many of the members were adversely impacted by the altitude as the high Polar Plain is at 3,000 metres. We had to carry the weight of the food and gear for many of the expedition members to enable them to continue.”
The grandfather of one of Eivind’s
79-year-old team members had been on Amundsen’s expedition in 1911 and for this trip, he carried the clock that Amundsen had also carried.
“We reached the pole on Dec. 14 after 10 days and were the only expedition making it in time for the jubilee.”
The resulting party where Eivind was interviewed by TV reporters and shared a photo with the Norwegian prime minister, was extremely satisfying, he says. 
