Survivors Rowe premieres at Hot Docs

Three northwestern Ontario men who were abused as boys by an Anglican priest will have their stories of overcoming that trauma told this month at one of North America's largest documentary film festivals.

Survivors Rowe premieres at Hot Docs on Sunday.

The name in the title refers to Ralph Rowe, an Anglican priest and boy scout leader, who flew his own plane into remote First Nations in northwestern Ontario in the 1970s and 1980s. It's estimated he abused as many as 500 boys.

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"When it comes to the story of Ralph Rowe, and the multitude of boys he abused, that was a story that was relatively unknown, certainly in the southern part of Ontario," filmmaker Daniel Roher said."A great injustice was just that nobody knew what happened."

Roher said one of his aims as a filmmaker is to facilitate reconciliation between indigenous peoples and non-indigenous peoples in Canada by highlighting injustices.

"Something I kept thinking about was, what would happen if this guy committed his crimes down south, in Toronto, as opposed to up north, out of sight, out of mind to indigenous kids?" Roher said.

Rowe, now 75, has been convicted of more than 50 sex-related crimes spanning the 1970s and 80s. He served less than five years in jail. A 2012 convictionon an additionalseven counts ofsex-related crimes dating back to the same time period,yielded a two-year conditional sentence.

"I think the complexion of his sentencing and the media attention around it would have been completely different [in southern Ontario]," Roher said.

But the film doesn't dwell on the negative, Roher said, it also shows"the triumph of the survivorsbeing able to reclaim their lives and move forward."

The premiere at Hot Docs provides a launching pad for the film to be seen widely, in other festivals, Roher said.

Its next stop is in Thunder Bay on May 9 at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, where the survivors in the film will be in attendance.