What Was the First Movie Ever Made in Canada?
A 1913 production photograph from Evangeline shows performers in period costume in a garden at the Billman residence in Armdale, Halifax. The film is considered Canada's first feature-length dramatic motion picture.
Photo credit: Photographer unknown / James Billman collection, Nova Scotia Archives
If “movie” means a feature-length dramatic film produced in Canada, the answer is Evangeline, filmed in Nova Scotia in 1913 and released in 1914. The silent adaptation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem ran approximately 75 minutes and was made by the Halifax-based Canadian Bioscope Company. Other moving pictures had been made and shown in Canada years earlier, and identifying the country’s first film requires a more precise definition.
In the 1890s, a film might consist of a brief moving-picture scene or a programme assembled from several separate reels. Cameras recorded trains, harvests and waterfalls, and some exhibitors took collections of films on tour to promote tourism or settlement. Whether a film was photographed in Canada, made by someone living here or produced by a Canadian company changes the chronology.
Canada was watching films in 1896
In June 1896, French exhibitors Louis Minier and Louis Pupier brought the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe to Montréal and showed moving pictures at the Palace on Saint-Laurent Street. The Cinémathèque québécoise identifies these as the first cinema projections in Canada. The screenings establish that Canadian audiences were seeing projected motion pictures by mid-1896, although the films on the programme had been made abroad.
Foreign film companies were recording Canadian subjects in the medium’s earliest years. The American Film Institute lists Canadian Falls—Table Rock, released in September 1896, with W. K. L. Dickson as cinematographer for the American Mutoscope Company. Its synopsis describes a view from Table Rock on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, but the catalogue's geographic classification specifies Niagara Falls, New York. This conflicting location information cannot establish where the camera stood or settle which moving picture was first photographed on Canadian territory.
The first Canadian filmmaking claims lead to Manitoba
James S. Freer, an English-born farmer who settled near Brandon, Manitoba, is often credited with making Canada’s first films in 1897. His moving-picture presentations showed aspects of Prairie life, including agricultural work and railways. Under the title Ten Years in Manitoba, the scenes formed part of a presentation that he took to Britain in 1898 and 1899, with support from the Canadian Pacific Railway, to encourage immigration to Western Canada.
Freer’s role as an early exhibitor and promoter is well documented. His claim to have personally photographed the first Canadian moving pictures is less secure. In research published by the Manitoba Historical Society, historian Ken Goldstein traces contemporary Winnipeg newspaper coverage that identifies other people involved in filming and exhibiting harvest scenes before Freer’s British tour.
A September 3, 1897, Winnipeg Free Press account described Hardie and another man filming Manitoba harvesting operations, including footage of provincial premier Thomas Greenway working in a field. In Goldstein’s reproduction of the newspaper account, Amet’s surname is supplied in square brackets. In January 1898, Hardie and travelling entertainer John Cosgrove disputed who had originated and financed the harvest films. Hardie identified E. H. Amet, an American, as the photographer, while Cosgrove disputed Hardie’s account of the enterprise. Goldstein found no conclusive record establishing exactly how Freer obtained the scenes he later exhibited.
Freer remains an important figure in early Canadian filmmaking, and Ten Years in Manitoba is an early example of a film programme assembled and exhibited by someone living in Canada. The evidence does not securely establish Freer as the cameraman who shot the first Canadian moving pictures. His touring programme consisted of short scenes rather than a single feature-length dramatic film.
A dramatic film followed in Ontario
In 1903, Joseph Rosenthal directed and photographed Hiawatha, The Messiah of the Ojibway at Desbarats, Ontario. Film historian Peter Morris identifies it in TIFF’s Canadian Film Encyclopedia as the first film drama made in Canada.
The production adapted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha and was connected to Living Canada, a series being photographed for the British-based Charles Urban enterprise. The contemporary producer’s catalogue described the performers as Ojibwe; that identification comes from the catalogue rather than a surviving account from the participants themselves. Morris describes the work as essentially a photographed stage play performed in outdoor settings. A detailed catalogue description and photographs survive, but the film itself is lost.
Hiawatha establishes an early dramatic-film milestone on Canadian soil, while its British commercial connections complicate any claim that it was the first independently Canadian-produced drama. The record also lists a Canadian Bioscope Company among its production credits. That name must not be confused without further evidence with the Halifax company formed in 1912 that later made Evangeline.
Léo-Ernest Ouimet helped establish a Canadian film business
Meanwhile, Montréal entrepreneur Léo-Ernest Ouimet was helping to turn film exhibition and distribution into a sustained business. Parks Canada dates the establishment of his Ouimet Film Exchange to 1905 and the opening of his first Ouimetoscope, in a converted entertainment venue, to January 1906. He opened a larger purpose-built cinema at the same site in 1907.
Ouimet also moved into production. Parks Canada records that he and camera operator Lactance Giroux were producing newsreels in 1907, recording Canadian events for the screen. His production activity followed the Manitoba films and Hiawatha, but his film exchange, theatres and newsreels helped establish a Canadian-run business.
Evangeline became Canada's first feature-length drama
Canadian Bioscope Company, established in Halifax in 1912 by H. H. B. Holland, made Evangeline during the summer of 1913 using local and American personnel. The film adapted Longfellow’s fictional love story of Evangeline and Gabriel, set against the historical deportation of the Acadians beginning in 1755.
TIFF’s Canadian Film Encyclopedia records a budget of approximately $30,000 and a five-reel running time of about 75 minutes. Directors William H. Cavanaugh and Edward P. Sullivan and lead actors Laura Lyman and John F. Carleton were American, while local performers appeared in supporting roles. Much of the filming took place around Grand Pré, the Annapolis Valley, Cow Bay and Eastern Passage, locations associated with the poem and its Acadian setting.
According to Nova Scotia Archives, Evangeline premiered in New York City shortly before its February 1914 opening in Halifax. The film received favourable notices in Canadian and American newspapers, and Canadian Bioscope followed it with several shorter dramas and comedies before the company disbanded during the First World War. Its production company operated from Halifax, its locations were in Nova Scotia and its principal actors and directors were American.
No complete print of Evangeline is known to survive. Nova Scotia Archives holds still photographs and records of the film’s production and reception, while the fate of the last known prints remains uncertain. The advertisements, reviews and production photographs document a film that audiences can no longer watch.
