The life, death and eventual return of Willow Bunch Giant gets more time in the spotlight

More than a century after the death of her famous relative, Jessie Ray Short is showcasing his life story with a new film.

Short has written and directed the documentary Moon Noonk Edouard (My Uncle Edouard), which will have its world premiere on June 4 at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

Short is the great-grandniece of Edouard Beaupré, a Métis man who was 8-foot-3 and one of the tallest men in recorded history.

Beaupré was from the Saskatchewan town of Willow Bunch. He was nicknamed the Willow Bunch Giant. 

Beaupré died in St Louis, Missouri in 1904 at the age of 23 from complications of tuberculosis shortly after an appearance at the St. Louis World's Fair.

“There's been a few films about him or loosely about him,” Short said. “But nobody from my family (made those). I'm not surprised that people from my family didn't do it. I think part of the reason I wanted to do it is because I had been working in the arts more broadly and I was aware of that kind of funding model.” Her film was produced in conjunction with the National Film Board of Canada.

Short, who lives in Regina and is a citizen of Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, believes others in the large extended family just didn’t have the means to create a film about Beaupré. He was the eldest of 20 children. 

“Up until this point, it was probably just that all my family members didn't have the time or they were busy raising families and living and just trying to get by,” she said. “So, this wasn't really something that was possible.”

Though he travelled extensively throughout Canada and the United States making appearances at events where the public were awed by his height, what happened after Beaupre’s death was shrouded in mystery for decades.

At the time his family couldn’t afford to pay for his body to be brought home from St. Louis, so it was agreed to have him buried in the American city. Unbeknownst to the family, however, his body was preserved and put on display there. His remains were later transferred to a Montreal museum and eventually to Université de Montréal.

Beaupré’s family didn’t find out about his whereabouts until the late 1960s. They eventually got to bring him home to Willow Bunch several years later to give their relative a proper burial.

Short said she created the documentary so more people could learn about Beaupré’s story. When she talks about her relative many are hearing details about him for the first time.

“When I start telling (the story) to them, they're kind of surprised that this is something that happened in Canada,” Short said. “And I'm hoping that he'll be seen as a person and not this ongoing spectacle. And I want some people to talk about him in a more humanized way and recognize that he still has family that remembers him to this day.”

Following its world premiere in Toronto, Short is hoping her documentary will be screened at other festivals around the country, especially in Saskatchewan.

“I think it'll be well received here,” she said of the western Canadian province. “I think Quebec will also be really interesting. I think that a lot of people in Quebec will be surprised about the story and his origins.”

Short said she was nine when she first heard about Beaupré when she attended his funeral with her family.

“It was somebody I'd never met, so that was kind of strange,” she said. “Then they told my siblings and me that he was super, super tall. And that was kind of cool.”

Short said it wasn’t too challenging to interview family members in recent years about Beaupre’s life for the movie. 

“It wasn’t too tough because at this point we’re a couple generations removed from when it actually happened,” she said. “And it was still very much a part of the story. Everybody knew his body was missing for a long time because that's why we were having the funeral over 80 years after he died.”

Short said some family members were upset that Beaupré’s body was not initially returned, even after requests.

“Even though it was like long in the past, it was still very much affecting us decades later,” she said. “So, it was quite fresh in some ways in people's minds. And they were willing to talk about it. But I think they were most willing to talk with me about it because I was actually related. People are pretty tired of just telling random reporters about the story over and over again.”

Moon Noonk Edouard (My Uncle Edouard) will be part of the Legendary Lineages programming session on June 4 at imagineNATIVE.

The festival runs June 2 to June 7 in person and June 8 to June 14 online.

More festival info is available at https://imaginenative.org/