True North: Inside the Rise of Toronto Basketball - NFB film removes the sugar-coating from 'We The North' boosterism

Looking for some CanCon for your self-isolation theatre? The NFB has more that 4,000 titles available to stream for free at NFB.ca. New shorts and features are being added regularly.

 By Jim Slotek

Rating: B

The impossible standard for a film like the National Film Board’s True North: Inside the Rise of Toronto Basketball is obviously Hoop Dreams, Steve James’ bittersweet, Oscar-nominated 1994 film about two young Chicago basketball hopefuls.

But True North – which instead focuses on three young Toronto kids with NBA dreams - does adhere to Hoop Dreams’ example by avoiding sugar-coating. Early on, there is plenty of enthusing from NBA greats like Steve Nash and original Raptor Damon Stoudamire, and the claim is made that if Canada were a U.S. state, it would now be the number one source of basketball talent in that country.

Tagged for greatness at 12, Elijah Fisher and his dad Rohan.

However, by the time the 90-minute film is over (Ryan Sidhoo’s movie – which debuts for free streaming on nfb.ca April 28 -  is a distillation of a short-form series that ran on the NFB site earlier), sports fans may be left wondering if having the attention of the basketball world is such a great thing. It means strings-attached-sponsorship from giant brand names like Nike and Adidas. It means sports programs are expected to produce stars rather than teams, and an elite Toronto prep school will waive a $30,000 tuition to land “the best 12-year-old in the country.”

And that 12-year-old, Elijah Fisher must cope with being scouted and touted as the best. As notes a middle-aged ex-player who was once himself the best 15-year-old in the country, “suddenly you’re a kid in a man’s world, playing a game that’s really a business.”

What pressures await? The current best 15-year-old, Keone Davis, is analyzed in a game video as being 20 pounds too heavy (courtesy, one supposes, of his Caribbean mom’s ox-tail soup, which she considers to be the fuel for his stellar game). 

And despite a game in which he scored 86 points (“It felt like I was playing a video game”), 18-year-old Cordell Veira is constantly reminded of his uphill struggle, from the wrong-side-of-the-tracks reputation of his school, to the difficulty he encounters getting the attention of U.S. Division 1 NCAA schools.

All fame is fleeting in sports, a point Sidhoo makes evocatively when he takes us on a tour of an empty high school, Toronto’s shuttered Eastern Commerce (now an Indigenous school), which had one of the most famous basketball programs in the country, producing the NBA’s Jamal Magloire and scores of NCAA players.

Beyond the bumpy road that awaits True North’s three protagonists, we get a true sense of the way basketball is beginning to supplant hockey, particularly in the consciousness of new Canadians. We meet basketball moms and dads, pretty much in the self-sacrificial mold of hockey moms and dads. The most memorable of these is David Joseph, father of former Raptor Cory Joseph, whose offspring recall having to scrupulously clean the snow off their driveway to continue shooting baskets through the winter.

We will find ourselves in arenas again, or glued to the screen hoping the playoff-bound Raptors find a way out of the conference. But True North is a decent reminder of We The North’s human backstory.

True North: Inside the Rise of Toronto Basketball: Written and directed by Ryan Sidhoo. Streaming at NFB.ca beginning April 28.