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Filmmaking is a powerful form of cultural and artistic expression, as well as a highly profitable commercial enterprise. From a practical standpoint, filmmaking is a business involving large sums of money and a complex division of labour. This labour is involved, roughly speaking, in three sectors: production, distribution and exhibition. The history of the Canadian film industry has been one of sporadic achievement accomplished in isolation against great odds. Canadian cinema has existed within an environment where access to capital for production, to the marketplace for distribution and to theatres for exhibition has been extremely difficult. The Canadian film industry, particularly in English Canada, has struggled against the Hollywood entertainment monopoly for the attention of an audience that remains largely indifferent toward the domestic industry. The major distribution and exhibition outlets in Canada have been owned and controlled by foreign interests. The lack of domestic production throughout much of the industry’s history can only be understood against this economic backdrop.

This article is one of four that surveys the history of the film industry in Canada. The entire series includes: Canadian Film History: 1896 to 1938; Canadian Film History: 1939 to 1973; Canadian Film History: 1974 to Present; Canadian Film History: Notable Films and Filmmakers 1980 to Present.

Barbara A. Paterson, CM, sculptor (born in Edmonton, AB). Barbara Paterson is a sculptor who works with wax, stone, bronze and steel. Her works often depict women and historical figures. She is perhaps best known for Women are Persons!, a bronze monument to the Persons Case that depicts the Famous Five. There are two copies of the monument, one located on Parliament Hill and the other in Calgary’s Olympic Plaza. Paterson was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2021.

Friedrich Karl von Bruemmer, CM, RCA, photographer, writer, researcher (born 26 June 1929 in Riga, Latvia; died 17 December 2013 in Montreal, QC). Latvian Canadian wildlife photographer Fred Bruemmer spent much of his professional career in the Arctic. He was famous for photographing the flora and fauna of the North and the lifestyle of the Inuit. Bruemmer was a prolific writer and researcher who wrote more than 1,000 articles and 27 books. His extensive work in the circumpolar world reached an international audience. He was described in a 1980 Maclean’s article as “one of the least-known world-famous men in Canada.” He was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1983.

Ken Livingstone, theatre director, designer, teacher (born 21 January 1945 in Glasgow, Scotland; died 5 May 2019 in Montreal, QC). Ken Livingstone was the first graduate of Canada’s first MA course in theatre (University of British Columbia, 1967). He taught and directed at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), led his own company in a decade of groundbreaking stage productions in London, Ontario, then freelanced briefly in Toronto and elsewhere before launching the first theatre program at Memorial University of Newfoundland and contributing largely to the theatrical life of Newfoundland over the next quarter-century.

Tsukiye Muriel Kitagawa (née Fujiwara), writer, political activist, (born 3 April 1912 in Vancouver, BC; died 27 March 1974 in Toronto, ON). In the 1930s and 1940s, Kitagawa was variously an editor or regular contributor to The New Age, The New Canadian, and Nisei Affairs, publications founded with her fellow second-generation Japanese Canadians to advocate for the political rights of Canadians of Japanese ancestry. She is most well known for her 1941-42 letters to her brother, Mitsumori Wesley “Wes” Fujiwara, which contained her firsthand accounts of the Japanese Canadian community in Vancouver in the months following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941) and as the Canadian government gradually implemented orders for the community’s forced removal from the coast (see War Measures Act; Internment of Japanese Canadians). Her letters were published posthumously in 1985 as This is My Own: Letters to Wes & Other Writings on Japanese Canadians, 1941-1948. Kitagawa’s writings were an important source for the Japanese Canadian Redress movement.

Lynne Cohen, photographer, artist, sculptor, printmaker, filmmaker, teacher (born 3 July 1944 in Racine, Wisconsin; died 12 May 2014 in Montreal, QC). Award-winning photographer Lynne Cohen was perhaps best known for winning the inaugural $50,000 Scotiabank Photography Award in 2011. She also won the Canada Council for the Arts’s Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award in 1991 and a Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts in 2005. Her work focuses on everyday interior spaces and how changes in lighting and framing alter how the viewer perceives these environments. She was also a professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa from 1974 to 2005.

Rose Ouellette, CQ, actress, author, composer (born 25 August 1903 in Montreal, QC; died 14 September 1996 in Montreal). With a career spanning over seven decades, burlesque actor Rose Ouellette holds the distinction of being the first woman ever to have directed two individual playhouses in North America. She was made a Chevalière of the Ordre national du Québec in 1990.

The RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) Flyers was a men’s amateur hockey team comprised mostly of RCAF personnel that was assembled quickly to represent Canada at the 1948 Winter Olympics. After losing exhibition games in Canada, the media declared the team a national embarrassment. Several roster changes improved the team and it won the Gold Medal at the Olympic Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Bertha Skye, cook, entrepreneur, Indigenous Elder (born 1932 on Ahtahkakoop Cree Nation, SK). From a young age, Skye learned to cook and used her talent to feed those in her community. She was chosen to participate in the 1992 Culinary Olympics, where she and her teammates won several medals, including a gold for Skye’s corn, bean, and squash soup (also know as Three Sisters soup). Among other advisory positions, Skye has served as an Elder in Residence at various post-secondary institutions in Ontario.

Dame Emma Albani, stage name of Marie-Louise-Cécile-Emma Lajeunesse, soprano, pianist, harpist, teacher (born 1 November 1847 in Chambly, Canada East [Quebec]; died 3 April 1930 in London, England). Albani was the first Canadian-born star in the international world of opera, oratorio and concert singing.

Beth Davis Powning, writer, photographer (born 15 August 1949 in Putnam, Connecticut). Beth Powning’s sensitive and thought-provoking novels, essays and memoirs explore her deep relationship with the natural world, as typified by life in rural New Brunswick. Her books — including Seeds of Another Summer (1996), The Hatbox Letters (2004), A Measure of Light (2015) and The Sister’s Tale (2021) — have earned many accolades. Powning received New Brunswick’s Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for High Achievement in English Literary Arts in 2010. She has also received honorary degrees from the University of New Brunswick and Mount Allison University.

Émile Nelligan, poet (born 24 December 1879 in Montréal, QC; died 18 November 1941). A romantic, parnassian and symbolist, Émile Nelligan was an outstanding poet at the end of the 19^th century.

In the early 2000s, Ojibwe artist Norval Morrisseau identified several forgeries being sold as genuine Morrisseau pieces. Since his death, a well-known case in 2018 involving keyboardist Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies exposed an art-fraud ring in Thunder Bay. The same year, the documentary There Are No Fakes, directed by Jamie Kastner, helped to bring this issue concerning Morrisseau forgeries into the public view. Instances of fake and forged art have impacted Indigenous artists on a devastating scale. (See also Contemporary Indigenous Art in Canada.)

Harry Wilfred Daniels, politician, writer, actor (born 16 September 1940 in Regina Beach, SK; died 6 September 2004 in Regina Beach). Daniels was a celebrated Métis politician and activist who fought for the rights of Métis people. His greatest contribution to Indigenous rights in Canada was the Supreme Court case Daniels v. Canada, which guaranteed that Métis and Non-Status Indians are considered “Indian” under the Constitution Act, 1867. (See also Indian Status.)

Judy Rebick, feminist, social activist, author, broadcaster, public speaker (born 15 August 1945 in Reno, Nevada). Judy Rebick has championed the rights of women, minorities and the working class since the 1960s. She was a member of the NDP’s Waffle caucus and a pro-choice spokesperson for the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics. She rose to national prominence as the president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (1990–93) and as the host of CBC TV programs (1994–2000). From 2002 to 2010, she was the Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University. She is also a best-selling author and was the founding publisher of rabble.ca.

Joe Shuster, cartoonist (born 10 July 1914 in Toronto, ON; died 30 July 1992 in Los Angeles, California). In 1933, along with writer Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster created the Superman comic book character.

Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak, Inuk children's writer, storyteller in English and Inuktitut (born 27 April 1948 in Qatiktalik [Cape Fullerton, NT], now NU). Kusugak is known for his picture books, almost all of which are illustrated by Vladyana Krykorka. Kusugak’s children’s stories all feature Inuit life and traditions. His books demonstrate how stories can be used to teach history and culture. Kusugak’s books have reached international audiences, with some translated into Japanese, Korean, French and Braille.