Science grad’s proud to share grandparents’ 47-year hobby with the world

Emma Waddington’s grandparents have a cool hobby that she’s beyond proud to share with the world in a new video project.

Emma’s the narrator for Hidden Secrets of the Canvas: One Couple’s Lifetime Quest to Uncover a Century. It’s a video project close to her heart because it stars her grandparents Sue and Jim Waddington. Dr. Waddington is a professor emeritus with the Department of Physics & Astronomy.

“Narrating the film was such an incredibly special moment for me,” says Emma, who graduated from McMaster with a master’s degree in kinesiology last August. She continues to work as a research assistant with the Neurofit Lab and is the director of communications and research with PrehabMD.

In 1977, Emma’s grandparents took up the hobby of finding the landscapes painted by Canada’s Group of Seven starting in 1920. Her grandparents have been at it ever since and have so far discovered, documented and photographed more than 800 locations. They’ve published a bestselling book and delivered talks to more than 12,000 people. And now they have a video up on YouTube that’s narrated by their oldest granddaughter.

Emma was five years old when she went on her first interior camping trip with her grandparents. “They’ve shared countless painting sites with me over the years. They always have some photos ready to go and some research about another painting location. I’ve tried to locate some sites on my own but I still have lot to learn from my grandparents.”

For the video, Emma’s 80-year-old grandparents revisited the first location they found. It took 28 kilometres of paddling and seven kilometres of portaging through Killarney Provincial Park.

Emma couldn’t make the trip although a few other family members joined in, including her mom Starr and dad Mike Waddington, who’s a professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society and Canada Research Chair in Ecohydrology. “My grandfather made sure they didn’t do all the work.”

It was a family-wide decision to have Emma narrate the film. She’d heard the story about her grandparent’s first trip for her entire life and she now gets to help share it with the world.

“Proud doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about my grandparents. I’ve been on some of their portages and my grandfather isn’t wrong when he says those hikes are uphill both ways. But I know if there’s anyone who can do it, it’s them.

“Maybe when they’re a little older, they’ll finally take me to the very first painting site.”