The Lotus Eaters is a 1993 Canadian drama film, written by Peggy Thompson and directed by Paul Shapiro. The film stars R. H. Thomson and Sheila McCarthy as Hal and Diana Kingswood, a married couple living on Galiano Island in British Columbia in the 1960s with their two daughters, Cleo (Tara Frederick) and Zoe (Aloka McLean). Plot The story is told mostly through the eyes of Zoe, the younger Kingswood daughter. The Kingswoods seem to live a happy life, though teenage Cleo is frustrated with an inability to do things, like travel to Vancouver to see the Beatles. A catalyst for change for their somewhat stagnant lives arrives in the form of Anne-Marie, Zoe's new teacher at the school where Hal Kingswood is principal. Anne-Marie arrives late on her first day of work with all of her belongings packed into her Volkswagen bus and takes up residence in a local cottage. The new teacher's progressive ideas shake up the little school, much to the irritation of Hal, the staid and stodgy principal. Zoe and most of her class are immediately delighted with the lovely and vivacious young Anne-Marie, who teaches them through song and art. One evening, Anne-Marie invites Zoe over to her cottage. As Anne-Marie bathes in her wood-fired, outdoor bathtub, she gives Zoe a book of spells, which is ostensibly the mechanism through which change comes to the sleepy little island. Change is relatively mild at first - Cleo gets her first boyfriend, Dwayne Spittle, and Zoe learns how to make the wind gust. Real change comes to Galiano Island when Hal discovers (thanks to Zoe) that his father hasn't been dead for decades, as previously presumed, and has only recently died (his ashes were shipped to Hal's mother). Hal's father abandoned Hal and his mother, Flora, when Hal was a child. Hal is rocked by the revelation of his father's abandonment, the fact that his father was alive, and his mother's lies. The combination of the shock of Hal's father's death and Hal's anger leads Flora to suffer a stroke. Hal is in a tailspin. When he chances upon Anne-Marie crying in her bus, he takes a moment to learn more about her, discovering that she abandoned her fiancé at the altar and that her mother calls her every morning to remind her that she is a disappointment. As Anne-Marie talks of wanting to sail away to