The Routes

A route forges connections, builds networks and bridges people, place and space. James “Zick” McDougall’s The Routes captures this integration through the lens of a picturesque bicycle ride on his First Nation Reserve, Kitigan Zibi, and its surrounding community. By engaging with the intimacies of geography and nostalgia, the film moves past introspection and contemplates the relative nature of traumatic memory and loss. In steering the path towards the plight of two local missing women, Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander, the film foregrounds the roots of identity and kinship and poses questions about the structures of remembrance, collective inquiry, responsibility and resolve.