When Canadian film director
Norman Jewison was presented with the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award for
lifetime achievement at the Oscars ceremony in Hollywood a few years ago, he
danced around the stage like a little boy who’d just copped the MVP Award for
his Little League team. As he accepted
a standing ovation from his colleagues in the star-studded audience, he showed
that he 
remains enthralled as
ever with the art—but not necessarily the business—of making movies.
“Don’t worry about the top gross,” he said, “Don’t worry about the Top 10 or the Bottom 10, or the demographics. Just tell good stories that will move us to laughter and tears—and perhaps reveal a little bit to us about ourselves.”
It was vintage Norman Jewison, an artist who’s never compromised his principles during almost a half-century spent making movies, even if it meant mailing in his green card and moving to Britain for almost a decade during the Nixon years. His film credits include The Russians Are Coming!, Fiddler On The Roof, A Soldier’s Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, In The Heat Of The Night, Moonstruck, The Hurricane and The Statement..
But if Hollywood has managed to borrow Norman Jewison’s soul, it doesn’t own it. That distinction goes to the 200-acre farm in Caledon, Ont., that Jewison, along with his late wife Dixie, has called home since 1978. He commutes regularly from his other home in Malibu to the rambling, log-and-stone house in Caledon overlooking livestock pens, rolling meadows, a tennis court and swimming pool—all nestled in a clearing in a dense hardwood forest.
“This is where I fill my cup,” said Jewison, when I interviewed him a few years ago. “It’s such a difference from New York or Hollywood or even downtown Toronto,” he said. “Caledon provides a kind of peaceful sanctuary for all of us up there—it’s an oasis really.”
But this movie mogul is no smooth-skinned, weekend gentleman farmer. With a big maple syrup operation and more than 100 head of Polled Hereford cattle in his purebred and commercial beef operation, Putney Heath Farms is considered a major player in Caledon.
“We farm four different farms besides our own, so we’re quite established here,” said Jewison, who roared with laughter as he related the fun he has at the expense of Hollywood film types. “I sometimes get calls on my mobile phone when I’m at the barn, and when I return the call I always say, ‘I’m doing the same thing you’re doing; you’re shovelling shit, but I’m shovelling the real stuff.’ “
Every director worth his
salt surrounds himself with top-notch artists, and Jewison takes pride in the
ones who work with him at the farm. He has an “assistant producer” (maple syrup
maestro and woodlot manager Jim Pipher), a “set decorator” (gardener and
handyman Bryan Clark, who’s also his chauffeur), and a cook and right-hand gal
(Angie, Bryan’s wife).
Said Pipher: “I’m his first and only forest manager. Been with Norman for 21 years now.” He recalled how, early on, he and his wife began the syrup operation with little pails on the trees, “until we realized how miniscule that was.” So Pipher went to maple syrup school in (where else?) Maple, Ont., to learn modern technology of gravity lines and pumps to tap the rising sap of the sugar maple tree in late winter and early spring. “That’s how it started and it just snowballed from there. We went from 50 trees and a hobby evaporator to 1,050 trees and a proper maple shack.”
At the annual sugaring-off and pancake breakfast hosted by Jewison, Pipher demonstrated how he taps the little “spile” precisely 2-1/2 inches into the xylem tissue of the maple. “They have to be re-tapped every year, and the new holes have to be at least four inches on each side of the hole, or 12 inches above and below it, so you don’t hurt the tree and it has a chance to heal.”
The length and quality of sap flow depends on weather, with the season averaging anywhere from three to six weeks. “Once the flower buds start opening, the syrup has an awful flavor,” Pipher said. “It’s called ‘buddy’ syrup. So you shut down before then.”
Putney Heath Farms has supplied maple syrup over the years to places like Williams-Sonoma, Holt Renfew Stores and Harbord Bakery.
When he’s not directing
movies, shovelling manure or riding horses on Caledon’s trails, Jewison loves
working in the extensive gardens that surround the house and dot the property,
or tending to the bougainvillea, hibiscus and lantana in his solarium.
Said Bryan Clark: “He’s a wonderful green thumb and a very visual person. In fact, he teaches me. We’ll go for a walk and he’ll say, ‘I like what you’re doing here,’ or ‘That needs looking at’ “ Clark is currently working with Jewison to design with drifts of plants and to create little vignettes, “things to catch your eye and draw you from a distance.”
I asked Jewison what he loves best about the gardens at the farm. “Oh gosh, I think it’s my whole hillside of wildflowers that I got from Bill Aimers, the wildflower man. I love wildflowers, I just love them, and in spite of the rye grass that creeps back in, there’s still quite a few there.”
And that day, as the pancake flippers flipped and the dogs and kids belonging to his Caledon neighbours mingled with film types on the trail to the sugar shack, Jewison beamed proudly, every inch the farmer, just like his grandfather, who had a livery farm in Millbrook.
“It is so different here, I can’t tell you,” he said. “It’s like night and day. “We don’t talk about movies, we don’t talk about problems with the stars, or problems with distribution, or exhibition, or anything. We talk about the trees, and we talk about shrubs, and we talk about the cattle, and the hay and whether it’s going to rain tomorrow. So it’s a different life, totally, and it gives me balance.”
Adapted
from a column that appeared originally in the Toronto Sun