Surveying a Century: Honouring the Life of Basil Easterbrook
When Billie-Jo Easterbrook first told me she wanted a film to honour the life of her dad, Basil, I pictured the scene easily: a quiet living room, an easy chair, maybe a cup of tea resting on a side table. A hundred years is a long time, after all. Surely Basil would be found somewhere soft and well-lit.
“Where can I interview your dad?” I asked.
“At work, of course!” she said.
“At work? But… didn’t you say he was a hundred?”
Clearly, my expectations were about to be thoroughly recalibrated.
With Basil (“Baz,” as he is known to many fans) being decidedly allergic to the spotlight, I teamed up with Butch, the General Manager of Bayview Auto, to plan our approach. Before I ever met the man himself, I explored the orbit: the employees, friends, and family members who circle his gravitational pull at the dealership he founded decades ago.
I assumed that after enough preliminary conversations, I’d have a tidy “Basil-shaped outline” ready to fill in with a few well-chosen on-camera prompts. Instead, the outline kept expanding. For some at the dealership, Basil had known them since they were children. For others, he literally was their father. Or grandfather. Or great-grandfather. If Bayview Auto were a village, Basil would be its founder, mayor, and resident philosopher—all at once.
Before I even set eyes on him, the stories had already begun to stack like the epic inventory of used tires Basil managed. Nearly every anecdote included the same throughline: Basil’s unstoppable work ethic.
One person remembered straightening bent nails for pennies under Basil’s watchful eye. Another recalled being “hired” to clean engine parts long before the law said they were employable. More modern tales involved Basil loading mountains of used tires onto his beat-up brown Toyota or power-washing both the outside and inside of his vehicle. No detail too strange, no chore beneath him.
The family stories added their own flavour; still chaotic and no less endearing. One son recalled being put at the wheel of a tractor at age six and set loose to circle the barnyard on his own improvised laps. A grandson told me about buying and reselling boats from “down south,” despite Basil possessing only a theoretical understanding of boating. Whether in the shop or on the farm, the hijinks always returned to two things: entrepreneurship and relationship. Basil built both with equal devotion.
To collect even more stories, Billie-Jo went all in. She threw a huge party in her dad’s honour. There was music, dancing, laughter, and a receiving line of visitors stretching across the room. While Basil held court, Billie-Jo and I pulled people aside into a quiet corner we’d set up for interviews. We recorded and recorded and recorded. It was exhausting, hilarious, and utterly beautiful.
At the heart of this story, I should share the events of the day on which I would finally meet the man himself.
It was June 2023, in a small meeting room at Bayview Auto. Under the guise of filming a short promotional piece “for the dealership” (thank you, Butch), Basil agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to sit down. A rare act of stillness for a man who prefers motion.
I was nervous. I had no tidy list of questions anymore. Just a century-old human being in front of me, and the weight of everyone’s stories swirling in my mind.
We began with our cover story—the automotive business—which lit him up immediately. From there, the conversation expanded outward in slow, concentric circles, like that tractor looping the barnyard all those years ago.
He told me about his hardscrabble childhood in Point Petre, long before Prince Edward County became known for boutique shops and twenty-dollar cocktails. He taught me how to dial a crank phone—something I still haven’t managed to test. He spoke about raising two branches of a family tree, in two different eras, with equal tenderness. And in one rare, disarming moment, he paused long enough to acknowledge the scars of war, unearthing memories he usually kept tucked away.
Through it all, he offered glimpses of a life stitched together by grit, curiosity, opportunity, humour, and love. It was like watching a century unwind.
To this day, I’m not entirely sure if Basil ever figured out what we were actually up to. Maybe he caught on. Maybe he simply indulged a curious kid (I was only 54 at the time!) on a time-traveling ramble through the fabric of Canadian history.
Either way, the interview ended when his wife, Ellie, phoned to tell him supper was nearly on the table.
The closing shot of the film is shaky, imperfect, and entirely fitting: Basil climbing into that famously battered brown Prius, then driving off around the corner of the building. It’s not my most technically elegant footage, but it is, without question, one of the most poetic things I’ve ever filmed:
A man born into the age of horses and steam power, heading home in an electric car to have dinner with his wife.
A life well lived, still in motion at 100.
***
These words are a simple tribute to a man I barely knew, but came to cherish as I explored his world through his stories and the words of others. When Billie Jo-reached out last month to share that her dad had passed, she asked me to create an accessible short version of the film to share at the celebration of life.
I shut the door to my studio and stared blankly at the screen. Through the blur of tears I saw nothing, but I imagined hearing plodding hoofbeats, the whirr of a vintage crank phone, the squeaky tracks of a battlefield tank, countless car engines starting, classic country music playing, the laughter of grandchildren and the sound of supper being served.
With my vision clarified, I opened Basil’s file and created this film to share with you now:
