By Aneka Rao
Last November, Mike McKay and Mike Kobzik decided to throw a party. Both avid paddlers, they’d recently started filming their kayaking trips and wanted to share the videos with friends and family. But as they started to plan the party, word spread through the Ottawa white water community. More and more people wanted to come, local companies called wanting to be sponsors and people started donating door prizes. Eventually, the small get-together turned into a movie-screening and fundraising event for the Ottawa Riverkeeper. Says McKay, “It ended up being a lot bigger than we thought. We held it at the Corner Bar down in the Glebe and it was probably the busiest night they’d ever had. It was jammed, people couldn’t move. It was crazy.”
Inspired by this success, McKay and Kobzik formed Five 2 Nine Productions and, from their already shot footage, created a whitewater-kayaking documentary called Just Like You Imagined. They realized that film was a great way to take their love of paddling to another level: to showcase the sport, get others excited about kayaking and educate a broader audience about water issues in Ottawa and around the world.
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