La raison avant la passion

In a prelude, the singing of Canada's national anthem, "O Canada," is filmed without sound, and images of Canada's maple leaf flag, adopted in 1965, appear. The body of the film is structured in three sections. The first and third parts are comprised of recorded impressions of a journey across Canada, beginning on Cape Breton and ending in Vancouver. The landscape is seen in all seasons and hours, in varying exposures, photographed in many cases from moving trains or cars. Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau's assertion "La raison avant la passion; c'est le thème de tous mes écrits" ("reason over passion; that is the theme of all my writing") introduces the first section. While images of Canada succeed each other, the phrase "reason over passion" appears as a yellow superimposition on the lower half of the frame in 537 permutations. In the middle section, a French lesson (a reference to Trudeau's affirmation of the principle of bilingualism) is heard on the soundtrack. A study of Trudeau follows, in which the prime minister, filmed at the 1968 Liberal Party convention, is viewed in intimate slow motion and freeze-frame passages.