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Willits Canoes documentary making film festival debut in Gig Harbor
Showings scheduled for the 2025 Gig Harbor Film Festival include 91 U.S. and international films and videos.
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At least one features local boys and their boat.
No, not that big, splashy 2023 MGM release retelling Olympic glory.
A newer film. A locally produced one. A shorter one — about a shorter canoe with a legendary history.
Willits Canoes
The movie: “Makers on the Tides,” a 42-minute documentary. As longtime residents, attentive Gig Harbor Now readers and local maritime history buffs will readily recognize, it tells the story of the quirky, perfectionist brothers Earl and Lloyd Willits.
The film chronicles two talented, ambitious and industrious Tacomans who, as teens, built their first canoe in 1908. Six year later, they built a canoe-works on Wollochet Bay.
In 1921, they moved production across the Tacoma Narrows to a two-story shop they built on the southern tip of Day Island. Its design accommodated the brothers’ unique construction methods, distinct personalities and specialized skill sets. For the next five decades, they worked alone in tandem, one upstairs and one downstairs, devoted to designing, building, perfecting and selling 17-foot canoes.
Their lives and company ended in the early 1960s after producing more than 900 canoes that admirers characterize as the “Stradavari of canoes.” Owners of surviving canoes treasure them and often display them as pieces of art.
The Willits brothers outside their Day Island shop in 1960. Willits Collection, Tacoma Public Library
The filmmakers
Working with an abundant array of artifacts, photos, vintage film, documents and interviews, “Makers on the Tides” producers Michael Sullivan, Mick Flaaen and Pat Chapman have created portraits of the brothers and their post-First World War era. Those times were initially marked by national waves — Roaring ’20s prosperity and burgeoning interest in outdoor recreation — that helped propel the Willits’ long-term success.
The film premiered late last year as part of a Washington State History Museum exhibit. Sullivan told Gig Harbor Now that only recently have the producers been enabled to release it publicly.
The GHFF marks its first film festival appearance. It is also scheduled to appear at the Tacoma Film Festival in October and likely at others during the coming months, Sullivan said.
Earl Willits working, likely at the company’s Wollochet Bay shop before 1921. Willits Collection, Tacoma Public Library
Film Festival details
Like other entries in the Gig Harbor Festival, “Makers on the Tides” is set to run twice: At 9 a.m. Friday, Sept. 26, and at 3:45 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 27. A Q&A with those associated with the film follows each showing.
The festival begins Thursday, Sept. 25, and ends Sunday, Sept. 28. It is at the Galaxy Uptown Theatres.
Tickets cost $50 for general admission, which gets you in for all four days of the festival; or $400 for VIP, which adds access to special parties and events. Click here to purchase.
To see or download the program for the 2025 Gig Harbor Film Festival, click here.