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November/December 2006 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Wildlife stories Feature: Stealing the scene Feature: Lake Winnipeg Feature: Alberta’s Cypress Hills The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

Lights! Camera! Canada!
Hollywood heads North time and again to find the perfect geographic double
By Steven Fick and Andréa Ventimiglia

From Nunavut’s Mount Asgard, which served as the Alps for James Bond’s death-defying ski scene in the opening sequence of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), to the rugged Alberta backcountry, which became Wyoming for last year’s blockbuster Brokeback Mountain, the Canadian landscape has made a name for itself in Hollywood.

Our natural geography and cityscapes have provided the backdrop for hundreds of cinematic productions, spawning a film industry in Canada that generates some 83,300 jobs and is worth more than $1.4 billion annually.

The appeal lies in our varied landscapes, says Kay Armatage, president of the Film Studies Association of Canada, a national academic group researching the history and art of film. "Canada’s got mountains, it’s got cities, the North Country and the plains," she says. "It’s got everything. From the very beginning, that was a selling feature for foreign film crews." At first, tax breaks and a lower Canadian dollar served as incentives for American producers, but now Armatage says our state-of-the-art filming facilities, labs and technicians are also a big draw.

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