Dollard native explores the deep

BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

The 60-year-old Dollard des Ormeaux native some Cubans call The Old Man in The Sea came home last month to announce the launch of two new underwater documentary series that will document parts of Quebec and the St. Lawrence Seaway valley.

Underwater explorer, filmmaker and photographer Kenn Feigleman announced the launch of the documentary series recently.

Feigleman will film 13 30-minute documentaries and 13 hour-long programs in the next 18 months.

Three episodes will be filmed in Quebec.

Feigleman is currently shopping the two series to specialty cable channels in Canada and the United States.

“I can’t identify the networks, but you can probably figure out just from the subject matter who would be interested in those,” he said.

Feigleman’s family “was among the founding families of Dollard des Ormeaux. We moved here in 1961, when it was all still farms and forests,” he said.

Feigleman’s company, called Deep/Quest 2 Expeditions, was founded in 1973. It has undergone reincarnations over the years, including a stint as a charitable research society that acquired an underwater research habitat - called Sublimnos - that still sits today, 35 feet below the surface, in Lake Ontario.

The brand name, dormant from the ear-

ly ‘90s until 2005, has returned with a vengeance.

“We have grown more in the past two years than we ever could’ve imagined,” Feigleman said.

Associations with corporate partners and sponsors, including diving-equipment manufacturer Tigullio and other leaders in the field of underwater exploration have encouraged Feigleman to produce the documentary series.

“Jacques Cousteau died and no one has filled that void for people,” Feigleman said.

“We’d like to do that.”

Feigleman’s three Quebec shooting locations will be Tadoussac, where many of the 300 beluga whales still alive in Quebec waters congregate every summer, shipwrecks off the Magdalen Islands and the Mingan Archipelago, where many of the world’s great whales come every summer.

“It’s an amazing sight. The biggest animal in the history of the world, the Blue whale, Finback whales and Humpback whales all show up there. It’s truly an amazing sight,” he said.

Feigleman has come a long way from teaching suburbanites how to scuba dive at the Westpark Country Club (now simply Westpark Pool) three decades ago.

“I’m very impressed with how far he’s come,” said Pierrefonds resident Jack Israeloff, who was a student of Feigleman’s in 1969. “He taught me quite a bit, and I’m proud of what he’s accomplished. He’s a man of integrity and a man of his word, and that, you have to respect,” he said.

For more information on Feigleman’s projects, visit his company’s website at www.deepquest2expeditions