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by KATE POCOCK
Family Travel Ink

Film Quiz: Where On Earth was this Movie Filmed?

In the film biz Canada has become a celebrity chameleon, perfecting the art of creating illusions, especially when it comes to location, location, location. For example, director David Cronenburg successfully filmed Moroccan desert scenes in Toronto. But sometimes these illusions are all too obvious. In one notorious Jackie Chan film, the Canadian Rockies supposedly kept popping up in Hong Kong! So nuke your popcorn, rent a few flicks, and see if you can spot these familiar sites filling in for more exotic world locales. You might see your own city, or even neighbourhood, in a whole new light.

1. The Shipping News: Kevin Spacey, an emotionally beaten man, moves to his ancestral home in Newfoundland. In one dramatic scene, a group of men haul his house across an iced-over bay. This was shot in:
a) The ice floes off northern Labrador
b) Santa’s Village, Bracebridge, Ont.
c) A bay in Nova Scotia

2. Lake Placid: Bill Pullman and Bridget Fonda battle a man-eating crocodile that’s lunching on tourists in beautiful Lake Placid in New York. The lake is actually:
a) Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes
b) Four different lakes in British Columbia
c) Lake Okanagan, BC, home to legendary sea monster, Ogopogo (Linda, I just did a story on this)

3. Timeline: This futuristic 2003 film shows Matt Craven, Paul Walker and a group of archaeological students trapped in 14th-century France. The medieval streetscapes were filmed in:
a) The cobble-stoned Lower Town of Quebec City
b) Old Montreal’s historic streets
c) The Canadian Armed Forces Base, Petawawa, Ontario

4. Legends of the Fall: Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins and Julia Ormond star in this film about a father and his brothers moving to the Montana Mountains to ride horses and live on the land. The range scenes showed which mountains:
a) the foothills of the Alberta Rockies
b) the Coastal Mountains of BC
c) Whistler/Blackcomb Resort’s downhill trails

5. K:19: The Widowmaker: Liam Neeson and Harrison Ford star in this true story of Russia’s first nuclear ballistic submarine which suffered a malfunction in its maiden voyage in the North Atlantic, 1961. The Russian shipyard was actually:
a) Theodore Tugboat’s berth at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax
b) Halifax Shipyards
c) Montreal Dockyards

6. Good Will Hunting: Matt Damon, a janitor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), is a math whiz. But to realize his dreams, he has to turn his back on best bud Ben Affleck and his blue-collar roots. The prestigious Institute was actually:
a) McGill University in Montreal
b) Toronto’s Central Tech High School
c) The Parliament Buildings in Ottawa

7. Insomnia: Homicide detective Al Pacino is dispatched to a small Alaska town to hunt down Robin Williams. The setting is not Alaska but:
a) the Yukon’s Gold Rush trail
b) the Sea to Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler
c) Wild Water Kingdom, Toronto

8. Little Women: Louisa May Alcott’s famous novel had Winona Ryder and the other March sisters coming of age in post-Civil War New England. The movie was filmed in:
a) Black Creek Pioneer Village, Ont.
b) Alexander Keith’s Nova Scotia Brewery
c) Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia

9. The Scarlet Letter: In the 1660s, Demi Moore finds religious freedom by travelling to Massachusetts with husband Robert Duvall. But she’s led astray in this 17th-century Puritan town:
a) Shelburne, Nova Scotia
b) Black Creek Pioneer Village, Toronto
c) The Viking village of Norstead, Newfoundland

Answers 1c, St, Margaret’s Bay near Halifax, Nova Scotia; 2b, nearly all lake scenes were filmed in four different lakes near Vancouver and on Vancouver Island; 3b, the historic area of Montreal is old but not that old!; 4a, Brad Pitt filming scenes near Calgary, Alberta; 5b, Harrison Ford, the big bad commander oversaw the repairs to the sub at the Halifax Shipyards; 6b, One of Toronto’s oldest a British Columbia Museum of Mining, used in over 80 film sets; One of Toronto’s oldest high schools filled in for MIT; 7b, Al Pacino is chasing Robin Williams over floating logs in a locale along the Sea to Sky Highwa; 8c, the family’s quaint little New England home dusted with snow was situated in British Columbia; 9a, Demi is forced to wear the letter “A” for adultery in picturesque Shelburne, Nova Scotia.

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