Fortunately for Grand Forks, long time resident Larry Hudema loves both the outdoors and theatre. His passion for both has benefited the community over the years as he has worked with the River’s Edge Theatre and the Phoenix Cross Country Ski Club to help provide opportunities for locals to find indoor entertainment and outdoor exercise. The interests in the outdoors and in theatre “balance one another,” Hudema said. “They keep me centered and keep me enjoying both.”

Hudema grew up in Port Alberni, but after a two-month-long European and Asian walkabout at the age of 21, the small town boy found his horizons expanded. “I accepted things and was able to blend with the other cultures, and I worked pretty much full-time trying to adjust to situations that were foreign. India vastly altered my way of thinking. Folks there are more interested in spiritual things, and here it is more material; there was an underlying spirituality there that really impacted me.” His time there altered his view of the outdoors as well. “It started out, I just loved being outdoors, but hiking in the mountains of Kashmir and Nepal added a spiritual element,” he said.

After returning to Canada, Hudema took a log scaling course that led to work in remote areas of the B.C. coast and eventually to Port McNeil where he settled down with Denise Poupard whom he would marry in 1979. While living and working in remote areas, Hudema’s love of nature solidified. “Flying in over all those fjords, I was transfixed,” he said. It was in Port McNeil that he also became transfixed with theatre; he helped form a theatre group and acted in his first production, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

After they moved from Port McNeil to the Boundary to raise their two children, Hudema and Poupard took up cross country skiing that would lead to involvement in the Phoenix Cross Country Ski Club and eventually to helping with the building of the club’s dacha in 2000 at the Marshall Lake ski area. There is a lot to experience in the heavy snow of the backcountry he learned. “There is a place I go called Mount Soul. You know when you get the snow ghosts, they mute other sounds in a positive way, and though I don’t profess to know a lot about Zen, to me, from what I do know, it is a very Zen-like experience. All the planning, and voices and stuff in my head, it all goes away. That is one place where I became glaringly aware of being in the moment.”

Hudema’s love of the theatre eventually resulted in helping to form River’s Edge Theatre in 1990 along with his wife, John and Mary Anne Westaway and Leslie Davidson. Their first production was the venerable Noel Coward play Blythe Spirit. Since then he has been involved in a number of productions, acting and behind the scenes. His latest interest though has been bringing films to the Boundary that residents would normally never get to see. He has been involved with Spotlight Films, the No Boundaries Film Club and for the last five years the Traveling Community Film Festival, a festival that brings to light the lives and work of people around the world. “The film festival, that was another step, to help understand these people’s experiences. This is a great forum for helping people understand, and initiate a discussion.”

Hudema isn’t sure where his interests will take him, but like the films, they will no doubt include content worthy of discussion.