The Lost Highway
Director Derreck Roemer
Countries Canada
Duration 74 min
Synopsis
Sixty years ago travellers filled the motels, restaurants, and gas stations along the Trans-Canada Highway near Ottawa. Not any more. Hard times have hit the region. At Gibbs’ Gas the washroom is a festering outhouse, the front window is scarred with long cracks and customers are few and far between. But Howard Gibbs refuses to give up on the business his father built during the Great Depression. With retirement looming, he lures his daughter Melanie, a single mother of two, back home from the city to turn things around. But then inspectors demand that the station's gas tanks be replaced, and neither Melanie nor her father has the money to pay for it. Next-door, another family is just starting their road-side business. David Daski and Linda Tremblay have spent seven years transforming a junk-strewn property into Nomads Rest, a boutique guesthouse that serves cappuccino and stages opera recitals in the garden. The transplanted urbanites believe that they can succeed where “the locals” have failed. But shortly after the Nomads’ grand opening, David and Linda’s marriage begins to collapse. The pressure of raising two young children and starting a business, in a region so poor that it could be mistaken for darkest Appalachia, has begun to take its toll. Once the main road between Toronto, Canada's biggest city, and Ottawa, the nation's capital, this section of highway is now a black ribbon of failed businesses and derelict properties. What happened? And why, despite the hardship, do some think it can be turned around?
Sixty years ago travellers filled the motels, restaurants, and gas stations along the Trans-Canada Highway near Ottawa. Not any more. Hard times have hit the region. At Gibbs’ Gas the washroom is a festering outhouse, the front window is scarred with long cracks and customers are few and far between. But Howard Gibbs refuses to give up on the business his father built during the Great Depression. With retirement looming, he lures his daughter Melanie, a single mother of two, back home from the city to turn things around. But then inspectors demand that the station's gas tanks be replaced, and neither Melanie nor her father has the money to pay for it. Next-door, another family is just starting their road-side business. David Daski and Linda Tremblay have spent seven years transforming a junk-strewn property into Nomads Rest, a boutique guesthouse that serves cappuccino and stages opera recitals in the garden. The transplanted urbanites believe that they can succeed where “the locals” have failed. But shortly after the Nomads’ grand opening, David and Linda’s marriage begins to collapse. The pressure of raising two young children and starting a business, in a region so poor that it could be mistaken for darkest Appalachia, has begun to take its toll. Once the main road between Toronto, Canada's biggest city, and Ottawa, the nation's capital, this section of highway is now a black ribbon of failed businesses and derelict properties. What happened? And why, despite the hardship, do some think it can be turned around?