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This short fiction film about a young boy torn between conflicting loyalties is resolved with humour and wisdom. Sunday, 2 o'clock, is zero hour for Gaston. He must be in two places at once: performing at a music recital and playing hockey with his teammates. What is Gaston to do?

Every child's favourite adventure story comes to life in a lavishly illustrated poem by Robert W. Service. Using camera-animated artwork by Yukon artist Ted Harrison, this production is designed to introduce the rich world of Canadian literature in an entertaining way and give students a good foundation for the appreciation of art.

The story of a prince who leaves school after his grade one graduation thinking he knows all there is to be happy. When he has grown up he meets Cinderella at his birthday party ball, but when she loses her glass slipper he cannot read her name on it. Thinking her name is "Umbrella" he searches far and wide shouting "Has anybody seen my Umbrella". After timely intervention of the prince's fairy godmother they are united. They get married and spend their honeymoon in grade two. Based on the popular children's book Has Anybody Seen My Umbrella by Max Ferguson.

This introspective short animation takes place In the village of Carcross, in the Tagish First Nation. Neighbourhood pillar Grandma Kay tell the local children the tale of how Crow brought fire to people. As the story unfolds, we also meet 12-year-old Tish, an introspective, talented girl who feels drawn to the elder. Here, past and present blend, myth and reality meet, and the metaphor of fire infuses all in a location that lies at the heart of this Native community’s spiritual and cultural memory.

In this feature documentary, husband-and-wife team Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison (Being Caribou), along with their 2-year-old son and dog, retrace the literary footsteps of Canadian writer Farley Mowat. They canoe east from Calgary towards the Prairies (the geography of Farley's Born Naked and Owls in the Family) and then traverse the same paths that Mowat took more than 60 years earlier in Never Cry Wolf and People of the Deer. Their epic 5,000 km journey—trekking, sailing, portaging and paddling—ends in the Maritimes, at Mowat's Nova Scotia summer home.

This feature-length fiction, originally produced as a television miniseries and based on the novel Nuages sur les brûlés by Hervé Biron, explores the colonization of northern Quebec during the Depression-era 1930s. These historical dramas relive the toil, hardship and unexpected rewards of the pioneer. Folk singer Félix Leclerc appears in each episode. Part I: Encounters with the inhospitable wilderness while clearing a townsite. Part II: Struggles for leadership; log cabins are built and the women arrive. Part III: The dangers of frontier life: forest fire, accident, anxiety about bankruptcy, lack of tools, hard labour. Part IV: Big steps forward: the curé brings in teachers and is in turn presented with a new, though rough-hewn, church.

This short documentary introduces us to Alden Nowlan, winner of Canada’s 1967 Governor General’s Award for poetry. His empathy for ordinary people was evident in his work as a poet, journalist, short-story writer, novelist and playwright. Nowlan’s writing is admired far beyond his native Maritimes, but he never forgot his roots, which he drew on for inspiration. This film, shot just before his death in 1983, records him reminiscing and reading from his work.

This short animated film follows Antoine, a young boy fascinated by his mysterious neighbour, a man rumoured to have once been a big game hunter. Antoine is eager to learn about hunting, but the lesson he learns from the wise older man is not at all what he had expected: Antoine is left with a profound reverence for life. The film is based on Jacques Godbout’s book Une leçon de chasse, which was nominated for a 1997 Governor General's Award for children's literature.

This short animation tells the tale of the great spirit Glooscap and how he battled with the giant Winter in order to bring Summer to the North and the Mi'kmaq people. Silas T. Rand, a Canadian Baptist clergyman and ethnographer, and Charles Leland, an American humorist and folklorist, first recorded the legend of Glooscap at the end of the 19th century. Since then, the legend has been retold many times, but never more beautifully than in this colourful animated interpretation.

This animated short tells the story of Maq, a Mi'kmaq boy who realizes his potential with the help of inconspicuous mentors. When an elder in the community offers him a small piece of pipestone, Maq carves a little person out of it. Proud of his work, the boy wants to impress his grandfather and journeys through the woods to find him. Along the path Maq meets a curious traveller named Mi'gmwesu. Together they share stories, medicine, laughter, and song. Maq begins to care less about making a good impression and more about sharing the knowledge and spirit he's found through his creation. Part of the Talespinners collection, which uses vibrant animation to bring popular children's stories from a wide range of cultural communities to the screen.

A grandmother tells her young grandchild the moving tale of a lonely girl and an unforgettable magical cat in this animated short narrated by Oscar®, Emmy and Tony award winner Maureen Stapleton. The film is based on a short story written by Dayal Kaur Khalsa and adapted by two-time Governor General's award recipient Tim Wynne-Jones.