Head Tale

The Nite Hawk Theatre that I grew up with in my hometown of Indian Head, Saskatchewan was recently facing the threat of being closed and sold to developers after the long-time owners decided to retire rather than pay for the necessary upgrades to digital equipment.

This would be a terrible loss as the theatre is a major part of the town’s (and indeed western Canada’s) history.  Depending on which article you read, the 110-year old building was the only opera house west of Winnipeg at the turn of the last century or the only one between Toronto and Vancouver.  Either way, it’s the longest continually operating theatre in western Canada. Beyond that, it’s a great source of entertainment, employment (both my sister as well as a couple cousins and many friends worked there over the years), and a gathering spot for the local community, especially the young people who are so important to having a vibrant rural community:

According to Neill, 65 per cent of the patrons who had been using the theatre were under 18 years old.

A group comprised of local fans of the theatre, arts lovers and former residents banded together raised nearly $100,000 of the $150,000 required to buy the building in which the theatre is located, with the local Credit Union underwriting the rest.

A similar story played out just down the road in Wolseley where that community was able to also raise a six figure sum to upgrade their drive-in to digital (one of the few remaining drive-ins in the province, if not the country) and, as with the Nite Hawk in Indian Head, allow it to continue to play an important role for in the lives of the people of Wolseley and surrounding communities.

Finally, here at RPL, we also have a similar success story of moving from outdated to new technology.  The Regina Public Library is very fortunate to have a single screen art house cinema that also needed upgraded to digital to meet the needs of today’s film industry.  This was done in December and although I haven’t had a chance to attend a showing in the new theatre, I’m sure it’s a great improvement.

This post makes me realise that you can draw a pretty straight line through all three of these theatres and how they’ve played a role in my life – the Nite Hawk is where I saw some of my first movies on the big screen (I still remember “ET” being so packed that the owner *must’ve* broken fire code to let people sit in the aisles) to the Wolseley drive-in, which became my movie viewing destination of choice when I was older and had a driver’s license to the RPL theatre which was a popular place to go when I was doing my undergrad degree – especially for their annual showing of “The World’s Funniest Commercials” as well as being memorable as the first place I saw “Clerks” by Kevin Smith, the first film to ever garner an NC-17 rating just for the language it contained! 😉

Here’s a great article from The Walrus about the transition from 35mm theatres to digital with lots of info about the Nite Hawk and featuring quotes from a high school friend of mine who still works at the Nite Hawk as well as with a Indian Head-based film restoration company.

Indian Head, population 1,815, sits forty-five minutes east of Regina. Motorists speeding along the Trans-Canada Highway might recognize its grain elevator from Little Mosque on the Prairie, which was filmed here, but they have little reason to stop. Life was different in 1904, when the town boasted one of the first opera houses west of Winnipeg. Back then, it presented everything from chamber music and The Pirates of Penzance to the Chautauqua circuit.