Beyond the ring

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This article was published 20/01/2024 (914 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In a professional capacity, Winnipeg writer-filmmaker Sonya Ballantyne revealed her affinity for pro wrestling a couple of years ago when she wrote the Battle in the Bush episode for the Manitoba-lensed CTV comedy series Acting Good.

That unforgettable show, which won the 38-year-old a nomination for a screenwriting award from the Writers Guild of Canada, revolves around a crisis at Grouse Lake First Nation when a wrestler from the NDN Wrestling Federation is unable to make the match on the reserve and someone in the community must step in to play the heel role of “Mr. Indian Affairs.”

Ballantyne returns to the grappler realm in a more solemn vein as co-director of the feature documentary The Death Tour, screening this weekend at the Slamdance Film Festival, the subversive cousin of the Sundance Film Festival, held concurrently with that more mainstream fest.

The film is a funny, tragic and surprisingly moving look at the titular 50th road tour of a wrestling show that passes through a series of northern reserves and communities under the watchful eye of Winnipeg promoter Tony Condello, who is described by the film’s executive producer Chris Jericho, as “a Canadian legend.”

“Most Canadian wrestlers of my generation up to this day have worked for Tony Condello,” says former Winnipegger Jericho as an interview subject in the film. “You have to go through the Tony Condello wheel if you’re going to make it in wrestling.

“Most of the big names in Canada — Dr. Luther, Don Callis, Edge, Christian, Rhino — did the tour early on. If you want to be a wrestler, the Death Tour is a definite way to prove to yourself and to others that you have what it takes.”

In a way, Ballantyne stepped up to that challenge as well, in association with writer-director Stephan Peterson, a veteran of the Eagle Vision reality series Ice Road Truckers.

“It was a really great collaboration because everybody on that production when we went up there, everybody just had this intense love for what we were doing,” says Ballantyne, who was determined to move beyond the wrestling-is-fake cynicism to find some hard truths about the sport.

“My intention was not to have it just be a wrestling documentary. When I consulted with Stephan, one of the things I wanted him to know, was, if we do this, we take this as seriously as hell. And he was also gung-ho for that.”

In addition to profiling the gruff 81-year-old Condello, the film takes an especially close look at four wrestlers.

● Sage “The Matriarch” Morin, credits wrestling with helping her survive the trauma of losing her two-year-old son at the hands of a drunk driver.
● Veteran wrestler Sean “Massive Damage” Dunster, who plays the bad guy fans love to hate, is seen as a generous soul behind the scenes, offering advice to novices and tearfully talking with school kids about his personal battle with painkiller addiction.
● Dez “The Eskimofo” Loreen, a self-trained Inuit wrestler from Inuvik, N.W.T., overcame his own troubles with substance abuse before taking on the mission of bringing wrestling to the Arctic.
● Sara “The Scottish Warrior” McNicoll is a Quebecois speed skater now channelling her shattered athletic dreams into pro wrestling.

If pro wrestling is in the business of manufacturing drama, the film reveals very real drama behind the scenes, as well as the occasional sense of unmitigated joy, as in a scene when the Matriarch finds herself ardently embraced by the kids in the wrestling audience.

Ballantyne, Swampy Cree from the Misipawistik Cree Nation, says her personal love affair with wrestling started with an early ambition to become a wrestler herself.

“I wanted to be Bret Hart. I wanted to be Shawn Michaels,” she says. “When I was 13, I was seriously thinking about pursuing wrestling as a career, but the only women wrestlers that were super-popular back then were fitness models with boob jobs. One of the most popular matches for women back then was the bra-and-panties match, where you win by stripping the other girl, so I could see the glass ceiling for myself before I even began and I gave up.”

But with her Acting Good script and now her feature film debut, Ballantyne sees an opportunity to finally make her mark on the sport.

“I feel that The Death Tour is my contribution to wrestling history as a whole, in terms of me really loving it, even if it has bad parts that I wish I could erase, specifically how anti-woman and anti-people-of-colour it can be,” she says.

“But I was so glad to get to make this movie, because it combines two things that I was always looked down upon for — being Indigenous from a rez … and being a wrestling fan.

“And now my directorial debut film is about an Indigenous community where wrestling happens. It is something that I never thought would be possible.”

One of the wrestling game’s most successful tropes is seeing the triumph of the underdog. That, she says, is why the sport connects with the Indigenous community.

“It asks: Why do difficult things from there’s no chance of success? Why do underdogs put themselves in this situation? And I think it’s something we captured. That’s why it connects so well with the Indigenous people as we have often been the underdog,” Ballantyne says.

“So I’m just very proud of it, even though I didn’t get to be a wrestler.”