201 Films & TV Shows Set In Canada During The 20th Century
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Snow Dogs
Florida Alaska Alberta The 1970s The 2000sGet ready for mush hour! — When a Miami dentist inherits a team of sled dogs, he's got to learn the trade or lose his pack to a crusty mountain man.
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The Bay of Love and Sorrows
New Brunswick The 1970sTragedy strikes the young people of a rural New Brunswick community when they become involved with a scheming and violent ex-con. — The Bay of Love and Sorrows is a haunting modern tragedy set on the rural shores of New Brunswick's Bay of Miramichi. In late summer 1973, Michael Skid, the son of a well-to-do judge, returns home and rents a dilapidated farm. He begins to spread the gospel of communal ideals, which he has absorbed during his travels in India. His new worldliness and ideas go over well with impoverished siblings Madonna and Silver Brassaurd and the hopelessly naïve Carrie. They go over less well with Tom Donnerel, a young farmer and Carrie's fiancé. Wounded by Tom's derision, Michael befriends ex-convict Everette Hatch, who, recognizing opportunity, exploits Michael's ideas to his advantage. Believing himself capable of understanding people from the other side of the track, Michael fails to recognize that the ex-con is manipulating him and so sets off a catastrophic chain of events in the community
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My Own Private Oshawa
Ontario The 1970sToronto-based gay actor and comedian Jonathan Wilson has written and performs a semi-autobiographical one-man stage show called "My Own Private Oshawa", which tells of his coming out when he was a high school student in Oshawa, Ontario, a bedroom community east of Toronto. Thinking that he was hiding his homosexual orientation - which he really wasn't - Jonathan lived a self-repressed existence in high school until he met transfer student Gordon, who was the first open, stereotypical and defiant gay student at the school. Jonathan tells of Gordon's influence in Jonathan working his own way through gay life as a teenager in the late 1970s. Although Gordon and Jonathan drifted apart as adults, Jonathan needs to head back to Oshawa to visit Gordon one last time.
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Westray
Nova Scotia The 1990sIn this feature documentary, filmmaker Paul Cowan offers an innovative, moving account of the Westray coal mine disaster that killed 26 men in Nova Scotia on May 9, 1992. The film focuses on the lives of three widows and three miners lucky enough not to be underground that day when the methane and coal dust ignited. But their lives were torn apart by the events. Meet some of the working men, who felt they had no option but to stay on at Westray. And wives, who heard the rumours, saw their men sometimes bloodied from accidents and stood by them, hoping it would all turn out all right. This is a film about working people everywhere whose lives are often entrusted to companies that violate the most fundamental rules of safety and decency in the name of profit.
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X-Men
New York District of Columbia Mississippi 🇵🇱 Poland Africa - General 🇨🇦 Canada The 2000s The 1940sEvolution Begins — Two mutants, Rogue and Wolverine, come to a private academy for their kind whose resident superhero team, the X-Men, must oppose a terrorist organization with similar powers.
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The Hurricane
Ontario New Jersey The 1950sHis greatest fight was for justice. — The story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a boxer wrongly imprisoned for murder, and the people who aided in his fight to prove his innocence.
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New Waterford Girl
Nova Scotia The 1970sA gifted teenager, dreaming of life beyond her small town, becomes inspired when a 15-year-old girl from New York moves in next door.
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Set Me Free
Quebec The 1960sA coming-of-age tale centered around Hannah, a young girl who is living a troubled family life. Set in 1963, Hannah develops a fascination with Jean-Luc Godard's then-recent film "Vivre sa vie". As she begins to model herself after the film's lead role, Hannah slowly begins to explore the confusing nature of her sexuality.
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Grey Owl
Ontario The 1930sHe Fought To Change The World — Archie Grey Owl is a trapper in Canada in the early 1930s when a young Iroquois woman from town asks him to teach her Indian ways. They live in the woods, where she is appalled at how trapped animals die. She adopts two orphaned beaver kits and helps Archie see his way to stop trapping. Instead, he works as a guide, a naturalist writer, and then the Canadian government hires him to save the beaver in a conserve by Lake Ajawaan in Prince Albert National Park. He writes a biography, which brings him attention in Canada and invitations to lecture in England. Before he leaves, he and Anahareo (Pony) marry. In England, his secret is revealed. Will Anahareo continue to love him?
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Winter Stories
Quebec The 1960sA tribute to friendship and to hockey! — An adult Martin Roy reminisces about his life in the 1966/67 school year. At fifteen years old and in his last year of junior high school, he breathed, ate and slept hockey. He collected hockey cards, played street hockey with his friends, tried skating and ice hockey for the first time in his life, but was most fascinated with his local national league team, the Montréal Canadiens, and its star player, Henri Richard. He dreamed of growing up and working for the Canadiens franchise. But a more immediate goal was to get tickets to one of their games, using M. Richard and his banker father, Hervé, as possible conduits to that goal.
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The Red Violin
Quebec England 🇦🇹 Austria 🇮🇹 Italy Shanghai The 1990s The 1960s The 1890s The 18th Century The 17th CenturySpans 300 years in the life of one famed musical instrument that winds up in present-day Montreal on the auction block. Crafted by the Italian master Bussotti (Cecchi) in 1681, the red violin derives its unusual color from the human blood mixed into the finish. With this legacy, the violin travels to Austria, England, China, and Canada, leaving both beauty and tragedy in its wake.
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Nô
Quebec The 1970sRobert Lepage directed this Canadian comedy, filmed in black and white and color and adapted from Lepage's play The Seven Branches of the River Ota. In October 1970, Montreal actress Sophie (Anne-Marie Cadieux) appears in a Feydeau farce at the Osaka World's Fair. Back in Montreal, her boyfriend Michel (Alexis Martin) watches the October Crisis on TV and sees Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau declare the War Measures Act. The Canadian Army patrols Montreal streets. Sophie learns she's pregnant and phones Michel. However, Michel is immersed in politics, while Sophie rejects the amorous advances of her co-star (Eric Bernier), becomes friendly with a blind translator, and passes an evening with frivolous Canadian embassy official Walter (Richard Frechette) and his wife Patricia (Marie Gignac). Meanwhile, in Montreal, Michael plots terrorist activities. Commenting on East-West cultural distinctions, the film intercuts between Quebec (in black and white) and Japan (in color).
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Jack & Jill
Ontario The 1990sIn this lightweight Canadian romantic comedy, a couple in their thirties discovers that love in the '90s can be a messy and complicated proposition. Jack (John Kalangis, who also directs) and Jill (Shauna MacDonald) are going to get married, until Jack changes his mind and coldly announces his reluctance on a voice-mail message. The two later talk in person and decide that rather than breaking up completely, they just allow themselves to see other people. Jack and Jill find their new flings at the same bookstore. Jack takes up with Laura (Tara Johnson), a beautiful customer, while Jill becomes seriously involved with store-clerk Stephen (Scott Gibson). When Jack and Laura realize that they don't have the right chemistry for a long-term relationship, Laura decides to help him win Jill back.
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Mr. Aiello
Quebec The 1990sA father's love is not enough to keep his dreams and his family together in this drama. Joe Aiello (Tony Nardi) is an Italian immigrant who settled in Montreal and opened a construction firm in the early '60s. Thirty years later, Tony's business is a solid success, and Tony dreams of passing this legacy along to his family. But Tony's wife has passed on, his son Nuccio (Hugolin Chevrette Landesque) is developmentally disabled, and his daughter Bennie (Michele-Barbara Pelletier) can't decide what she wants to do with her life, dropping out of college against her father's wishes shortly before she is to graduate. Despite his disappointment with Nuccio and his exasperation with Bennie, Joe has a fierce love for his children, but Bennie feels that her father's affection is starting to crush her more than it nurtures her.
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Titanic
England Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Ocean The 1910s The 1990sNothing on Earth could come between them. — 101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.
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The Jackal
Quebec 🇫🇮 Finland 🇷🇺 Russia District of Columbia The 1990sHow do you stop an assassin who has no identity? — Hired by a powerful member of the Russian mafia to avenge an FBI sting that left his brother dead, a psychopathic hitman known only as The Jackal proves an elusive target for the people charged with the task of bringing him down: a deputy FBI director, a Russian MVK Major, and a jailed IRA terrorist who can recognize him.
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The Assignment
Quebec 🇫🇷 France 🇦🇹 Austria 🇮🇱 Israel 🇱🇾 Libya The 1980sJack Shaw has experienced the terror first-hand. He's a top CIA agent who's tracked international killer-for-hire Carlos "The Jackal" Sanchez for over twenty years and barely survived Carlos' devastating bombing of a Parisian cafe. Now, he finally gets a break when he discovers Carlos' dead ringer: American naval officer and dedicated family man Annibal Ramirez.
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Pit Pony
Nova Scotia The 1900sGlace Bay, Nova Scotia Canada, 1901. Willie MacLean is a 10-year-old boy with a love for horses and liking to school to cape the difficult times his family has. Willie's stern, but benevolent father is a coal miner in a local mine along with his older brother John. But when Willie's father is injured and John is killed in an accident at the mine, Willie is forced to step into his brother's shoes to support his older sister Nelle, and two younger sisters until their father recovers. Willie soon finds work at the mine lonely (aka: the pit) and unfriendly in which he forms a bond with a pit pony horse in order to make it though each day.
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The Call of the Wild: Dog of the Yukon
Yukon The 1900sJack London's classic story from 1903 about Buck, a dog kidnapped from his home in California and taken to the Yukon where he is mistreated until a prospector discovers him and relates to his situation. Although the two are bonded, Buck yearns to run free with the wild dogs in the wilderness.
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Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
Ontario The 1990sShove this up your mind — A pharmaceutical scientist creates a pill that makes people remember their happiest memory, and although it's successful, it has unfortunate side effects.
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Die Hard: With a Vengeance
New York Quebec The 1990sThink fast. Look alive. Die hard. — New York detective John McClane is back and kicking bad-guy butt in the third installment of this action-packed series, which finds him teaming with civilian Zeus Carver to prevent the loss of innocent lives. McClane thought he'd seen it all, until a genius named Simon engages McClane, his new "partner" -- and his beloved city -- in a deadly game that demands their concentration.
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Canadian Bacon
Ontario New York District of Columbia The 1990sI'll tell ya another thing, their beer sucks! — The U.S. President, low in the opinion polls, gets talked into raising his popularity by trying to start a cold war with Canada.
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The Confessional
Quebec The 1950sThe year is 1952, in Quebec City. Rachel (16), unmarried and pregnant, works in the church. Filled with shame, she unburdens her guilt to a young priest, under the confidentiality of the confessional. In the present year of 1989, Pierre Lamontagne has returned to Quebec to attend his father's funeral. He meets up with his adopted brother, Marc, who has begun questioning his identity and has embarked on a quest for his roots that would lead them to the Quebec of the 1950s. Past and present converge in a complex web of intrigue where the answer to the mystery lies.
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In Pursuit of Honor
District of Columbia Texas 🇨🇦 Canada The 1930sAs soldiers they were taught to fight for honor. As men they were willing to die for it. — To save a group of horses slated to be destroyed by the US Cavalry, a group of officers rebel and begin a journey towards Canada to save themselves and the mounts.
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Eldorado
Quebec The 1990sThis free-form Canadian drama chronicles the dysfunctional lives of six young people living in Montreal during the summer of 1994. All of the characters are in their twenties, and all are dissatisfied with modern life. Rita is hell on rollerblades and makes her free-wheeling living snatching purses and breaking into cars. She camps out in the apartment of her wealthy friend, Roxan who devotes her spare time to caring for the homeless. Lloyd is a skinhead Deejay for an alternative radio station. His self-important, outrageous ranting provides the background for the rest of the stories. Lloyd is in love with Loulou, a barmaid at a punk club. Loulou is involved in a boring relationship with liquor store clerk, Marc; she looks to Lloyd for excitement. Finally there is screwed-up Henriette, who is so busy venting her neurosis in her shrink's office that she has no time to listen to the doctor's advice.
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