Canada Vignettes
Discover this series of classic shorts exploring every facet of Canadian culture and history.
Included Movies
Canada Vignettes: Fashion Designer
A young designer, Selma Bryant-Fournier, starts her career in a large clothing manufacturing firm in Montreal. She hopes to design clothes for mass production that are beautiful, functional and affordable by everyone.
Canada Vignettes: The Horse
This animated short illustrates how at one time horses provided man with unprecedented mobility and how the arrival of the iron horse brought this era to an end.
Canada Vignettes: News Canada
Historical events are related through the medium of simulated news broadcasting in 1878.
Canada Vignettes: Spence's Republic
An animated vignette about the role of Thomas Spence in the formation and demise of the Republic of Manitoba at Portage la Prairie in 1867-68.
Canada Vignettes: Lady Frances Simpson
A humorous account of the pioneering journey of Lady Frances Simpson, along with her piano, from England to Manitoba.
Canada Vignettes: Holidays
A montage of watercolour images of the work and occasional play of a farm family.
Canada Vignettes: Voyageurs
An animated film about the hardships of voyageurs' lives in the early Canadian fur trade.
Canada Vignettes: Trees
Life in Canada is reflected by people's comments on trees as a tree is shown undergoing seasonal changes.
Canada Vignettes: Logger
The history of the development of modern logging techniques on the British Columbia coast.
Canada Vignettes: Faces
Animated images showing the variety of people who live in Canada.
Canada Vignettes: Toronto
An animated film depicting the evolution of the City of Toronto from 1749 to 1978.
Canada Vignettes: Newfoundland
An examination of the Viking explorers who were the first Europeans to discover Canada.
Canada Vignettes: Skier
In this short vignette, skier Kathy Kreiner prepares for and participates in her Olympic gold-medal race at Innsbruck.
Canada Vignettes: Captain Cook
Two hundred years ago Captain Cook stopped briefly at Nootka Sound. This animated vignette depicts how he began the sea otter trade which led to the development of the Pacific north west.
Canada Vignettes: Land Bridge
This film describes the journey of nomadic Asian people to North America via a land bridge.
Canada Vignettes: Port Royal
This is the story of the first French settlers in North America, who spent their first winter on an island in the Bay of Fundy. Despite overwhelming hardships the survivors, joined by other new colonists, eventually established Port Royal, the foundation of Acadia and the Acadian people.
Canada Vignettes: Trading Post
An animated film about the Hudson's Bay trading post, and the relationship between fur traders and Indians.
Canada Vignettes: Flin Flon
This short documentary vignette reveals the curious origin of the name of Flin Flon, Manitoba.
Canada Vignettes: Bill Miner
Bill Miner was a train robber in British Columbia at the turn of the century. This animated film depicts a disastrous episode in his career.
Canada Vignettes: Stunt Family
This short film from the Canada Vignettes series profiles a unique French-Canadian family, the Fourniers, 12 of whom work as stunt men and women for films.
Canada Vignettes: The Maple Leaf
The maple leaf on the Canadian flag turns into two profiles that illustrate the many relationships between people.
Canada Vignettes: The Performer
This short film from the Canada Vignettes series features tenor Roger Doucet singing the Canadian national anthem, O Canada, before a hockey game in the Montreal Forum.
Canada Vignettes: Men of the Deeps, Cape Breton
This short vignette features coal mines in New Waterford and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, along with traditional Cape Breton folk songs sung by Men of the Deeps - a miners' choral group.
Canada Vignettes: Hudden and Dudden and Donald O'Neary
There's a "silver lining in every cloud" as Donald O'Neary turns every misfortune his two neighbours can engineer into gold coins. Against the background of the Irish countryside, the customary "rich but dumb" characters meet their match in the "poor but crafty" hero. The story introduces the student to our rich multicultural background through the exploration of folklore of one of the peoples that make up Canada's cultural mosaic.
Canada Vignettes: Fort Prince of Wales
A Canada Vignette giving a humorous animated version of the history of Fort Prince of Wales from its construction to its capture by the French.
Canada Vignettes: Onions and Garlic: A Hebrew Fable
This animated short tells a humourous Hebrew folk tale about a man's venture to introduce onions to a far away kingdom and a disreputable man's attempt to exploit that.
Canada Vignettes: Acadian Quadrille
A short history of one of the traditional dances of Acadia--the quadrille.
Canada Vignettes: Sodbusters
A Canadian prairie farm family has a tough beginning on their new farm.
Canada Vignettes: December Lights
Animated film of a traditional Franco-Manitoban tale that resembles the story of the first Christmas.
Canada Vignettes: Alouette
A story about two symbolic characters who sway to the song Alouette.
Canada Vignettes: Moccasins
Close-ups of fine detail of the ancient skill of quillwork embroidery--brightly coloured geometric designs on high-ankled, Seneca-type moccasins. These moccasins are over one hundred years old, from the fabled Speyer Collection that was repatriated from Germany by the National Museum of Man in 1975.
Canada Vignettes: Dance
The metamorphosis of a map of Canada into human forms who share the natural resources to the rhythm of a dance.
Canada Vignettes: Riverdale Lion
A visual interpretation of the poem "Riverdale Lion" by Canadian poet and essayist John Robert Colombo.
Canada Vignettes: Instant French
This film promotes, in the best K-Tel tradition, a new device used to speak French.
Canada Vignettes: Woolly Mammoth
An animated film showing a woolly mammoth and its offspring. These animals lived on the Canadian tundra over ten thousand years ago.
Canada Vignettes: Wop May
This short animated film is about Wop May, one of Canada's leading bush pilots in the 1920s.
Canada Vignettes: The Egg
An egg desperately tries to prevent being hatched. In this animated short from the Canada Vignette series, learn how societies in evolution are often in danger of self-destruction.
Canada Vignettes: Indian Pipe
This carved ritual pipe from the Plains First Nations culture depicts the act of creation, alive in stone, Mother Earth in the embrace of Father Sky. Integral to the all-important sacred ceremonies, this personal possession expresses in strong imagery the vigour and joy of life itself.
Canada Vignettes: Métis Coat
The decorative pattern style of a traditional Metis coat is explored.
Canada Vignettes: Inuit Pipe
In this animated short from the Canada Vignette series, the camera explores, in exquisite detail, the daily hunt, fishing scenes and children at play as etched in black on an ivory Inuit pipe.
Canada Vignettes: Unity Pole
This vignette shows the ceremonial totem-pole raising by the Nisgha Nation at Ayanish.
Canada Vignettes: Delta Plane
This film is about the emotions that can lead one to take that jump into space necessary for hang gliding with a Delta Plane.
Canada Vignettes: Bluenose 1921-1946
A short history of Canada's greatest sailing ship.
Canada Vignettes: Ma Chère Albertine
This short film from the Canada Vignettes series depicts the Montreal of 1905-1910 with hand-painted vintage postcards.
Canada Vignettes: Love on Wheels
This short fiction film tells the love story between a young anglophone and a young francophone who unite their destinies in roller skates.
Canada Vignettes: Log Driver's Waltz
A short illustrating Wade Hemsworth's folk song about a woman's admiration for the agility of her boyfriend, the log driver.
Canada Vignettes: Don Messer - His Land and His Music - Don Messer 1910-1973
One of six Canada Vignettes from the NFB production Don Messer - His Land and His Music, featuring one of the principal performers, Don Messer, who has since passed away.
Canada Vignettes: Don Messer - His Land and His Music - Marg Osburne 1927-1977 Pt. 1
One of six Canada Vignettes from the NFB production Don Messer - His Land and His Music, featuring one of the principal performers, Marg Osburne, who has since passed away.
Canada Vignettes: McIntosh
A vignette based on the story of John McIntosh, the Ontario developer of the McIntosh apple.
Canada Vignettes: Canada's Snowbirds
This installment in the Canada Vignettes series depicts the Canadian Forces Air Demonstration Aerobatics team at work.
Canada Vignettes: Calliope
A vignette on the travelling calliope (also known as steam organ), a musical instrument that produces sound by sending steam through large locomotive whistles.
Canada Vignettes: Dancing Dolls
An animated vignette. A lively dance of painted wooden dolls that twirl, swing and sway to gay music.
Canada Vignettes: Klondike Gold
This animated film illustrates the terrible journey, the back-breaking work, the exotic and gaudy city of Dawson, and the turmoil and triumphs of the 1898 Klondike gold rush.
Canada Vignettes: Arctic Mission
A team of divers assemble a big bubble in the Arctic Ocean.
Canada Vignettes: Arctic Seascape
A vignette exploring the depths of the Arctic Ocean.
Canada Vignettes: Angel of Death
A vignette about a 1912 fly-swatting contest organized by The Toronto Daily Star to draw attention to the danger posed to public health by flies. Through archival photographs and newspaper headlines the highlights of the contest are reviewed in a light, humorous manner. The winner, a determined young lady named Beatrice White, killed over 500 000 flies during the six-week contest and was dubbed the "Angel of Death" by the paper.
Canada Vignettes: Melvin Arbuckle, Famous Canadian
W.O. Mitchell recounts Newton's Law of Falling Backhouses, a story based on the youthful pranks of his prairie childhood.
Canada Vignettes: Countdown
This vignette illustrates the variety of professions, people and technical procedures required by the filmmaking process.
Canada Vignettes: Ice
Ice cutting on the St. Lawrence River in the 1860s is illustrated in song and animated graphics.
Canada Vignettes: Emergency Numbers
A "cat and dog fight" film that also reminds us to keep emergency numbers close to our telephones.
Canada Vignettes: Catapult Canada
This model-animation vignette takes a humorous look at the theme of transportation.
Canada Vignettes: Mussel Mud
A vignette using animation and live action to depict mussel farmers digging in the mud through the ice on bays and estuaries in Prince Edward Island.
Canada Vignettes: The Move
In this short documentary from the Canada Vignettes series, a Saskatchewan grain elevator is moved across the snow-covered prairie to a new home after nearly a half-century of use. The film follows the lifting and transporting of the 9-storey, 200-ton structure, and examines the feelings of the people as they witness the final passing of their town's one and only grain elevator.