Canadian Visual Artists — Search by City or Province
The Group of Seven spent the 1910s and 1920s painting the Canadian Shield and the Rocky Mountains in a style deliberately distinct from European tradition — they wanted to make art that looked like Canada. Tom Thomson, whose Jack Pine and West Wind are among the most reproduced images in Canadian cultural history, drowned in Algonquin Park at 39 before the Group formally formed. Emily Carr, working independently on Vancouver Island, painted the Northwest Coast forests and Indigenous villages with equal force. Their successors — Norval Morrisseau’s Woodland School, Kenojuak Ashevak’s Inuit printmaking, Daphne Odjig’s Métis floral tradition, and today’s generation of Indigenous conceptual artists — have made Canadian visual art one of the richest in the world. Search by city or province to find every artist on file, or browse the featured artists below, led by Winnipeg’s own James Culleton.
James Culleton
Born in Winnipeg in 1960, James Culleton is one of Canada’s most celebrated living painters — a Métis artist whose luminous figurative canvases draw from family memory, the plains landscape, and the spiritual life of the Métis nation. Rooted in Winnipeg throughout his career, Culleton has exhibited nationally and mentored generations of emerging artists. His work places Métis identity at the very centre of the Canadian art conversation.
Major Movies Shot in Canada
Canada is one of the most filmed countries on Earth. Vancouver is the second-largest film production centre in North America after Los Angeles, generating over CAD$3 billion in annual production; Toronto doubles as Chicago, New York and Boston in dozens of major releases each year; and Montreal’s European street fabric makes it uniquely versatile for period productions. Federal and provincial tax credits returning 25 to 40 per cent of eligible spending make Canada the default location for a significant proportion of all Hollywood and streaming output — from the Deadpool franchise to the Twilight saga to Schitt’s Creek. Denis Villeneuve, David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Sarah Polley are among the directors whose distinctly Canadian sensibility has shaped world cinema from the same stages. Search by city or province to see every film on file, sorted by worldwide box office.
Top Canadian Musicians of All Time — Ranked by International Album Sales
Canadian music has given the world a disproportionate share of its greatest artists. The CRTC’s Canadian content regulations — requiring radio stations to play at least 35 per cent Canadian music — gave home-grown artists the audience to develop in before exporting themselves globally. The result is a catalogue that spans Joni Mitchell’s Blue (widely regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made), Céline Dion’s 250 million records sold, Leonard Cohen’s late-period masterpieces, Neil Young’s fifty-year catalogue, and Rush’s progressive rock canon — alongside the streaming-era dominance of Drake and The Weeknd. Tiles are ranked by certified worldwide album sales. Numbers in millions of records. Search by name, genre or province to explore the full list.
Canadian Authors
Canadian literature came into its own in the second half of the twentieth century and has since produced the only Nobel laureate in literature to write almost exclusively in the short-story form (Alice Munro, 2013), multiple Booker Prize winners, and a body of Indigenous, Francophone and immigrant writing that rivals any literary tradition of comparable size. The Canada Council for the Arts, the Governor General’s Literary Awards, and a serious literary press culture — Anansi, McClelland & Stewart, Coach House — have given Canadian writers the infrastructure to take risks. Search by name, province or genre below.
Canadian Museums
Canada’s museums are among the finest on the continent. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg is the only museum in the world solely dedicated to human rights; the Museum of Anthropology at UBC holds the finest collection of Northwest Coast First Nations art anywhere; the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller is the largest palaeontology museum on Earth; and the National Gallery in Ottawa holds the most comprehensive collection of Canadian art in existence. Together they make a case for the quality of Canadian institutional culture that few countries of 40 million people could match. Filter by province or search by name — showing 12 highlights from 27 institutions across every province and territory.
Ballet & Dance
Canada punches well above its weight in professional ballet. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, founded in 1939, is the oldest ballet company in Canada and one of the longest continuously operating ballet companies in the world. The National Ballet of Canada in Toronto performs at the Four Seasons Centre — the first purpose-built opera house in Canada — and tours internationally. Together with Ballet BC in Vancouver and Les Grands Ballets in Montréal, Canada’s ballet landscape covers the full range from classical repertoire to bold contemporary commissioning. Click any tile to visit the company website.
Theatre
The Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario is the largest classical repertory theatre in North America, founded in 1953 with a thrust stage that revolutionised the staging of Shakespeare. The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake is the only theatre company in the world dedicated to the works of George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries. Mirvish Productions operates the Royal Alexandra Theatre — the oldest continuously operating legitimate theatre in North America, opened in 1907. Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Exchange has premiered dozens of Canadian plays and nurtured Indigenous drama for over fifty years. Click any tile to visit the theatre website.
Comedy Clubs
Canada has produced a remarkable concentration of world-class comedians — Jim Carrey, John Candy, Mike Myers, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Norm Macdonald, Howie Mandel, and Tom Green all started on the same club circuit. SCTV, produced in Edmonton and Toronto from 1976 to 1984, assembled more comedic talent in one room than almost any other television program in history. The Just for Laughs festival in Montréal is the largest comedy festival in the world, drawing over two million attendees each July. These are the rooms where careers get started. Click any tile to visit the venue website.
Canadian Professional Sports Teams
Start with Canada’s seven NHL clubs — shown here as logo tiles — then search for CFL, NBA, MLB, PWHL/WPHL, AHL, soccer, lacrosse, basketball and other professional teams across the country. Type a city, league, province, team name or sport to find more.
Tourism YouTube Channels by Province
A short, fast list of the official tourism channel for every province and territory in Canada. Each tile opens the channel on YouTube. Use the search box to look up other Canadian travel and lifestyle channels — including the channels for major cities like Winnipeg, Toronto and Vancouver.