Advertisement

Spaces In-Between: The Railway and Early Cinema in Rural, Western Canada

  • Paul S. MooreEmail author
Chapter
First Online:
  • 178 Downloads
Part of the Global Cinema book series (GLOBALCINE)

Abstract

Canadian early cinema is perhaps unique for the central place of railway companies in sponsoring the most prominent and some of the earliest films of Canada and its rural landscape. Prior histories have neglected how a primary audience for these films were the people of rural Canada themselves. Railways sponsored first films of Manitoba’s rural prairie, made by R. A. Hardie in 1897, who exhibited them across the Canadian West multiple times before they accompanied lectures by J. S. Freer in Britain. Charles Urban’s ‘Living Canada’ was produced with support from the Canadian Pacific Railway by the London Bioscope and debuted in London, but the company extensively toured Canada for several years with a focus on stops in the Prairies and Rocky Mountains. In Canada, land and space is a problem to overcome—the barrier to nationhood, rather than its source—and communication was the solution. Rural cinema was implicitly appended to nationalist policies by showmen riding the rails, filming the rails, and returning by rail to exhibit those films to rural audiences.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Acland, C., & Buxton, W. (Eds.). (1999). Harold Innis in the New Century: Reflections and Refractions. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar
  2. ‘Across Canada by Bioscope’. (1903, January 21). London Daily News, p. 7.Google Scholar
  3. Allen, R. C. (2008). Decentering Historical Audience Studies: A Modest Proposal. In K. Fuller-Seeley (Ed.), Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing (pp. 20–33). Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  4. Althusser, L. (1989). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (pp. 170–186). London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
  5. ‘B.C. Bioscopic Scenes’. (1903, August 11). Vancouver World, p. 8.Google Scholar
  6. Bender, T. (1975). Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth-Century America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
  7. Berland, J. (2009). North of Empire: Essays on the Cultural Technologies of Space. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Bottomore, S. (1983). Joseph Rosenthal: The Most Glorious Profession. Sight and Sound, 52(4), 260–265.Google Scholar
  9. Braun, M., & Keil, C. (2008). Living Canada: Selling the Nation Through Images. In R. Abel, R. King, & R. Bellini (Eds.), Early Cinema and the ‘National’ (pp. 63–68). Eastleigh, UK: John Libbey.Google Scholar
  10. Brégent-Heald, D. (2015). All Aboard! Travel Films, Railroads and the North American West, 1897–1910. American Review of Canadian Studies, 45(1), 8–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. ‘Canada Cinematographed’. (1902, August 16). Manitoba Free Press, p. 13.Google Scholar
  12. Canada. Library and Archives. Department of the Interior. Immigration Case Files. Lantern lecture trip to Great Britain by J. S. Freer. (1895–1907). RG-76-I-A-1. File 22870, reproduction copy reel C-4782.Google Scholar
  13. Carey, J. (1983). Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph. Prospects, 8, 303–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Charland, M. (1986). Technological Nationalism. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 10(1), 196–220.Google Scholar
  15. Cohen, L. (1990). Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  16. Eamon, G. (1995). Farmers, Phantoms and Princes: The Canadian Pacific Railway and Filmmaking from 1899–1919. Cinémas: revue d’études cinématographiques, 6(1), 11–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. ‘Excellent Views by the Biograph (sic)’. (1903, August 1) Victoria Colonist, p. 6.Google Scholar
  18. Friesen, G. (1987). The Canadian Prairies: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
  19. Fuller, K. (1996). At the Picture Show: Small-Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
  20. Fuller-Seeley, K. (Ed.). (2008). Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  21. Galbraith, J. (1957). The Hudson’s Bay Company as an Imperial Factor, 1821–1869. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  22. Gaudreault, A., & Marion, P. (2005). A Medium is Always Born Twice…. Early Popular Visual Culture, 3(1), 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Grieveson, L., & MacCabe, C. (Eds.). (2011). Empire and Film. London: British Film Institute.Google Scholar
  24. Hartman, J. B. (2002). On Stage: Theatre and Theatres in Early Winnipeg. Manitoba History, 43, 15–24.Google Scholar
  25. Innis, H. A. (1971). A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
  26. Johnson, M. (2010). The Places You’ll Know: From Self-Recognition to Place Recognition in the Local Film. Moving Image, 10(1), 23–50.Google Scholar
  27. Löwy, M., & Sayre, R. (2001). Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Maltby, R. (2011). New Cinema Histories. In R. Maltby, D. Biltereyst, & P. Meers (Eds.), Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies (pp. 1–40). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. ‘Manitoba in the Kinetoscope’. (1897, December 9). Winnipeg Tribune, p. 1.Google Scholar
  30. ‘Manitoba Reproduced’. (1897, September 11). Manitoba Free Press, p. 8.Google Scholar
  31. Martin, A. (1976). James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  32. Moore, P. S. (2011). The Social Biograph: Newspapers as Archives of the Regional Mass Market for Movies. In R. Maltby, P. Meers, & D. Biltereyst (Eds.), Explorations in New Cinema History (pp. 269–279). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
  33. Moore, P. S. (2012). Mapping Early Cinema’s Mass Circulation: Film Debuts Coast-to-Coast in Canada. Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 21(1), 58–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Moore, P. S. (2013). The Flow of Amusement: The First Year of Cinema in the Red River Valley. In K. Conway & T. Pasch (Eds.), Beyond the Border: Tensions Across the 49th Parallel (pp. 71–89). Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar
  35. Morris, P. (1992). Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema, 1895–1939. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar
  36. den Otter, A. A. (1983). The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Prairie Transportation Problem, 1870–85. In J. Foster (Ed.), The Developing West: Essays on Canadian History (pp. 25–48). Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.Google Scholar
  37. Peterson, J. (2006). ‘The Nation’s First Playground’: Travel Films and the American West, 1895–1920. In J. Ruoff (Ed.), Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel (pp. 79–98). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Poor, H. V. (1876–1885). Manual of the Railroads of the United States. New York: H.V. & H.W. Poor.Google Scholar
  39. Rosenzweig, R. (1983). Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  40. ‘Scenery of the Canadian Pacific’. (1903, January 21). London Standard, p. 2.Google Scholar
  41. ‘Scenes for England’. (1897, December 9). Manitoba Free Press, p. 4.Google Scholar
  42. Simmel, G. (1950 [1903]). The Metropolis and Mental Life. In K. Wolff (Trans.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel (pp. 409–424). New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
  43. Steven, P. (2003). Pleasing the Canadians: A National Flavour for Early Cinema, 1896–1914. Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 12(2), 5–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  44. Stuart, R. C., & Taylor, M. B. (2005). The Epic of Greater North America: Themes and Periodization in North American History. In S. Hornsby & J. Reid (Eds.), New England and the Maritime Provinces: Connections and Comparisons (pp. 280–294). Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar
  45. Thissen, J. (2017). Introduction: A New Approach to European Cinema History. In J. Thissen & C. Zimmerman (Eds.), Cinema Beyond the City (pp. 1–20). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  46. Thompson, J. H., & Randall, S. J. (2008). Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
  47. Tönnies, F. (1957 [1887]). Community and Society – Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.Google Scholar
  48. Toulmin, V., & Loiperdinger, M. (2005). Is it You? Recognition, Representation, and Response in Relation to the Local Film. Film History, 17(1), 7–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  49. ‘Views of B.C. Will Be a Feature in Coming Bioscope Entertainment’. (1903, July 29). Vancouver World, p. 3.Google Scholar
  50. Waller, G. A. (2005). Imagining and Promoting the Small-Town Theater. Cinema Journal, 44(3), 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Ryerson UniversityTorontoCanada

Personalised recommendations

Cite chapter

Buy options