Picture this: a single mom who makes just enough at her local restaurant gig to provide a half-decent Christmas for her and her son. There’s her attractive next-door neighbour with impossibly white teeth who also happens to be a bit of a grinch. He not only gives her son a hard time when he plays outside their building but demands their condo board remove the Christmas tree out front for being an “obnoxious” hazard. Needless to say, as the holidays draw near and the two repeatedly bump into each other, they discover they’re soulmates. Naturally. And they do it all against a snowy, suburban backdrop, featuring everything from a sprawling and romantic skating rink to a popular local diner. All that’s missing is a gazebo.
If any of those narrative elements sound familiar, then you’ve probably watched one if not ten Hallmark holiday movies. But perhaps what’s most familiar is not the near-identical characters or well-worn enemies-to-lovers plot but the filming locations, which more often than not are flurry-friendly small Canadian towns. They also tend to be directed, produced, written by, and starring Canadians. For instance, that plot above, about the single mom and the grinchy neighbour? That’s the story of Noel Next Door, the movie leading Hallmark’s annual slate of holiday movies. It’s directed by Maxwell McGuire, who shot the movie in his hometown of Ottawa. This year alone, sixteen Christmas movies were shot in Ottawa (where the tourism office has a map of Hallmark destinations), marking a local record. In other words, one of the most successful networks on television today may be selling American family values, but the movies wouldn’t be what they are without their quintessentially Canadian settings, crews, and creatives.
