Dave Heard's film offers audiences a chance 'to actually see people digging with their hands in the soil, getting down in the dirt and uncovering history' Aurorans have a chance to uncover the history of the Happy Woodland Pet Cemetery with a new “journalistic piece” of filmmaking. The film, called Who's a Good Boy?, was created by local heritage advocate Dave Heard, using a flip camera and backed by a passion for a unique piece of Aurora’s history. “To actually see people digging with their hands in the soil, getting down in the dirt and uncovering history,” said Heard, “these were citizens, people in prominent positions in the town, et cetera, on their hands and knees, ripping up vines, and I wish I could have captured what their heartbeat was like that day, seriously.” “When somebody is digging in the ground and uncovering a stone and seeing a name, seeing a date, that's powerful to give those 30 people that opportunity as like an amateur archaeologist, or curators,” he added. “They’ll probably carry that for the rest of their lives.” The Happy Woodland Pet Cemetery was originally opened by Victor Blochin and Anne Wilson, who purchased the property on Yonge Street in the late 1920s. The site has undergone years of remediation work. In 2023, the town purchased 16-acres of land surrounding the pet cemetery, with an eye to eventually incorporating it into a larger park. Heard said the film will showcase how far the site has come. The pet cemetery has become somewhat of an Aurora filmmaking epicentre recently, with the town partnering with several filmmakers in the production of an award-winning documentary. Michelle Johnson, the town’s collections and exhibitions co-ordinator, said public access to the park could still be “a couple of years” away as the town is working on the park plan, but said Heard’s film offers an insight into the early years of the remediation work at the pet cemetery, with the filming taking place several years before the Happy Woodland Pet Cemetery: Uncovering History documentary. “You come up onto the site and it was untouched, the forest was reclaiming the pet cemetery at the point when he was filming, so you have to look pretty hard to see any evidence of what we know today as the pet cemetery,” she said. Johnson said there is something "visceral" about seeing those volunteers' first reactions to uncovering the pet cemetery. “That's something that you can't recreate," she said. "You see something you only see something for the first time once. So this film really captures those candid reactions." Who's a Good Boy? will be screened on June 3, starting at 7:30 p.m., in the Davide De Simone Performance Hall in Aurora Town Square, at 50 Victoria St. The film is about an hour long, followed by a question-and-answer session. Tickets can be bought online.