Although a suburban hockey rink has often been the locus of history in the making in this country, this time the rink was repurposed to provide a setting for a new spot out of MacLaren McCann for Molson Export highlighting a ‘Canadian History’ moment.

The spot was directed through Jolly Roger by Steve Chase, in town earlier this summer for this project and to shoot some additional ‘I Am’ monkey musings.

Created by writer/beer aficionado Mark Fitzgerald with writer John Frier, art director Sean Davison and creative director Rick Davis, the spot represents a shift in strategy for Export, moving the beer from a guy’s guy staple, as conveyed by spots in the past, to establishing a heritage position, ‘dimensionalizing’ the brand and, given its durability over the past 90-plus years, providing Ex a presence as a part of Canadian history.

At the same time the creative meshes nicely with the currency of the swing thing, harking back to the 1940s with a true-to-era delivery of the clothes, the hair, the music and, of course, the moves.

The spot centers on a Canadian celebration, the homecoming of our boys from France after wwii, and zeros in on one boy’s reunion with his sweetheart and the swinging goings-on of that seemingly more innocent time.

Our hero is heard in a voiced-over letter to his girl promising that the two will soon dance again while the camera moves over a group of revelers shaking it up with joyous post-war abandon at a Victory dance.

The Brampton hockey arena locale was painstakingly transformed into a huge dance hall for the spot, complete with bar, nine-piece swing band in pinstripes playing on stage in front of the Union Jack, and guys in uniform and gals in curls dancing up a storm.

Over 350 extras endured the heat to form the jubilant group of dancers and gawkers.

On the second day of the shoot, the hero couple and a core group of dancers remained perky and delivered an ongoing loop of eye-popping dance moves as dop Barry Peterson circled repeatedly on a track around the sweltering swingers.

Maintaining the integrity of the look and the feel of the day was the challenge for director Chase, who wanted to deliver the closest approximation of the real deal rather than a McSwing, K-Tel-Records-does-the-’40s version.

Every detail, from the Army, Navy and Air Force uniforms flown in from the u.k. by wardrobe person Debra Berman, the men’s haircuts that rise slightly on one side, the small mustaches and the choreography to the shooting style of Chase and Peterson was key.

The tough part, said Chase between takes and bouts of bashing Fitzgerald with the fake bottles on the tables scattered around the set, was maintaining a restrained style to correspond with how actual footage would have been shot.

To gear up, Chase watched archival war footage and nfb films from the era. To deliver the weathered look of the final black-and-white product, Chase had a print made and aged and dirtied it up. Old footage gets shrunk and images get soft over the years, and this organic, hands-on method of achieving that look was chosen by Chase over using one of the existing software solutions that mimic aged film.

The spot, possibly the first of a campaign, was edited by Bruce Copeman at Axyz. Agency producer was Franca Piacente. Exec Producers were James and Peter Davis.

The thinking behind the creative was to capture the shared history of the beer and the country along with the idea that history is made every day, says Frier, citing the Churchill nugget: ‘History will be very kind to me: I intend to write it.’