A new documentary is in the works to “capture the untold stories of community resilience” during last summer’s Bush Creek East wildfire.

Producer CJ Boisclair says their documentary — “Backburn – Behind the Lines” — will explore what happened during the wildfire in the Shuswap, the impact on the surrounding communities, and some of the more controversial subjects.

“In the beginning, that (the controversial subjects) is kind of what interested us in the story, but when we went out there, there was a lot more than that,” said Boisclair.

“We do touch on all the controversial subjects including, delayed notification for evacuations, having what some called a police state, the people that stayed, and the people that left; there is so much controversy on what happened out there, we just want to report on what did actually happen.”

Boisclair says while they’ve already spoken to several people in the Shuswap, they are still looking to talk to more, including those who stayed behind to help fight the blaze.

“They are the people that really need to tell the story from their point of view anyways because they were the only people there,” said Boisclair.

“Everybody outside can believe rumours or they can have their own opinion but coming from the people that were there – the stories tell themselves – and it is the same story through each individual community through the Shuswap.”

Additionally, Boisclair says they don’t want the documentary to be one-sided, noting they will also be talking to fire officials.

“So, people that can speak to fire behavior and what a backburn does and why it is done to show the scientific part behind it too. Hopefully, people will get a good overview of the whole experience, not just the controversy.”

Boisclair tells Radio NL they are looking for financial support to complete the documentary.

“Now we are six months in, we have a lot of footage, not exactly everything we want yet, so we are still doing some interviews, but we need funding for that; we can no longer pay for it out of pocket,” said Boisclair.

“We need to hire a composer, we need to have production costs to hire an editor, we need to be able to travel down to Victoria to talk to some of these fire experts to tell the full picture.”

A GoFundMe has been set up with a goal of raising $50,000 to complete the “Backburn – Behind the Lines” documentary.

Details about the documentary can be found here.