Ten Years in Manitoba

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Ten Years in Manitoba is a Canadian documentary film made by James Freer and released in 1898. The film is now lost, but it is often described as the first known film by a Canadian filmmaker. It shows short scenes from Manitoba and was shown in the United Kingdom in April 1898 as part of a Canadian Pacific Railway campaign to encourage immigration to the province.

The footage includes scenes such as workers in a hundred-acre wheatfield, a harvesting scene with trains passing by, and trains arriving in Winnipeg, including the CPR Express. Some reports say the film also shows Freer’s home and family, as well as the Premier of Manitoba, Thomas Greenway, harvesting grain on his own farm.

The Manitoba Historical Society notes that part of Freer’s film may have come from footage filmed by other people. Before Freer’s film, a Winnipeg bartender named Richard Hardie, an American filmmaker named E. H. Amet, and a producer named Cosgrove had shown kinetoscope films in Manitoba that included harvesting scenes, including Greenway. Freer apparently bought those films and included them in Ten Years in Manitoba along with his own material.