Canada pavilion

Hotel du Canada is a towering landmark that leads guests to the Canada pavilion at Epcot World Showcase. The distinctive building, modeled after Ottawa's familiar Chateau Laurier, also boasts a Rocky Mountain and waterfall backdrop.

Near the entrance to the pavilion, guests are often seen snapping photos in the brilliant flower gardens, inspired by Victoria's Butchart Gardens.

The Canada pavilion is a mixture of rustic Native Indian villages, an ornate French-flavored chateau, the Scottish influence of the Maritimes and the ruggedness of the Canadian Rockies.

It combines authentic architectural designs, and features 30-foot totem poles which mark the Native Indian village where a log cabin and its nearby northwest trading post carry out the northwoods theme. Gift shops display authentic Canadian crafts, boutique items and a Roots clothing store.

The flowered pathway leads into a mountain canyon where a 30-foot waterfall cascades into a rushing stream. Rocky, pine-studded slopes surround the shaft opening to Maple Leaf Mine, the entrance to the theater.

Le Cellier Steakhouse is located in a chateau wine cellar that celebrates the Canadian provinces and territories, featuring the flavors of Midwestern seasoned steaks and seasonal Canadian seafood paired with wines and beers of Canada, the border states and Europe.

The showcase introduces visitors to the traditions, culture and atmosphere of the places that are most attractive to tourists in Canada. Off Kilter, a Celtic rock band, entertains live at the Canada outdoor stage on the promenade.

Many young people from Canada work in the pavilion and help to explain their country to the world. Those included are students participating in the World Showcase fellowship ambassador program who study management and the hospitality industry under the direction of Disney professionals. These and others brought to Walt Disney World Resort through a unique cultural program are replaced by a new group of "ambassadors" each year.

The Canada pavilion features the largest World Showcase garden and the most labor-intensive landscape. It was inspired by the Butchart Gardens in British Columbia that were built by Jenny Butchart to beautify the limestone pits dug by her husband’s cement company. It is in this garden where seasonal displays of color are showcased. For instance, during the winter months, all flowers blooming in this pavilion are white, giving the appearance of a Canadian snowfall. Throughout the year, 138 rose bushes bloom in this garden. Annually, it takes over 100 hours to remove spent blooms from the nearly 13,000 roses found throughout Epcot.

Dining

Canada's Le Cellier is welcoming guests to a cozy restaurant featuring "Canadian steakhouse" fare -- favorites such as wild mushroom-stuffed filet or buffalo rib-eye served with parmesan "smashed" potatoes. For fish lovers, there's maple-glazed Canadian salmon. And for dessert, a special butterfinger mousse with raspberry sauce satisfies any sweet tooth.

O Canada!

Walt Disney World audiences see Canada from coast to coast in a 17-minute motion picture presented in CircleVision 360 as a major feature in Epcot World Showcase.

Highlights of the film titled "O Canada" focus on spectacular scenery and the people of many regions. Forty thousand Canadian snow geese are seen rising in a honking mass along the St. Lawrence Seaway. And Disney cameras ride a buckboard through the middle of the Calgary Stampede.

More than two years in production, the motion picture took the Disney Studios' film crew into all 12 Canadian provinces -- from harbors at Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, and Vancouver, British Columbia, across snow-crested mountains to Kaskawulsh Glacier in the Yukon Territory and Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula in the Northwest Territories.

During research and scouting for the project, producers found a variety of scenery and a mixture of ethnic backgrounds as broad as in the United States. This became the underlying theme of the film.

A crew of six -- armed with a 600-pound camera pod fitted with nine 35mm cameras positioned to capture a 360-degree panorama -- shot for nearly two years. When they finished, they had cranked more than a quarter million feet of film through the cameras. The presentation is projected onto nine screens encircling viewers in the Canada CircleVision 360 theater.

The shooting took place in bits and pieces -- when events were happening, and when the weather cooperated.

Weather was often a paramount concern, as the Disney crew mounted its complex set of cameras beneath helicopters for low-altitude flights and lowered it from the bomb bay of a B-25 for other aerial shooting. The unit was also mounted on toboggans, dog sleds, racing chuckwagons, dollies, flatbed trucks, and various ships and boats including the proud schooner Bluenose II.

Though they avoided blustery weather, the crew encountered bitter cold. During shooting from a dolly at skate level in the midst of an ice hockey game, equipment was subjected to temperatures of 24 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-31 degrees C). On a helicopter shot above Quebec City, the wind-chill factor measured minus 50 Fahrenheit (-60 degrees C).

To succeed under such conditions, the crew used electric heaters to warm the cameras, shot for brief periods, and rewarmed the cameras.

The true-to-life adventures being filmed produced another set of adventures for the crew. For instance, Disney cameras joined a helicopter roundup of an estimated 5,000 reindeer on Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, at the outer limits of the Northwest Territories.

Some of the wildest flying of the production, it was back and forth, sideways -- everything but upside down. The crew got its footage of the reindeer, part of a privately owned herd of some 15,000 head.

Twenty-five hundred miles southeast, on the St. Lawrence Seaway, the crew had hours for a coffee break awaiting the arrival of the Greater Canadian Snow Geese. They holed up in a marshy blind at 4 a.m. one chilly autumn morning ... and waited. Three hours later, silence was broken by the "honk-honk-honk" ... of a single goose. He circled the field and flew away.

The crew held its ground, however ... then a few more advance-guard birds came ... and left. Finally, the waiting game paid off.

Approximately 40,000 birds, on a migratory stopover, surrounded the CircleVision cameras ... and then they were back in flight, creating a din of flapping wings and honking calls.

Other scenes capture the pomp of national parades and pageants, the quiet beauty of a choir procession in Montreal's Notre Dame Cathedral, the Canadian Rockies in Alberta and the soft glow of a midnight sun above Mackenzie River Delta in the Northwest Territories.

Audience must stand throughout.

Type - film

When to go - go anytime

Duration - 17 mins

Restrictions
Guests may remain in wheelchairs or ECVs to experience the attraction.
Because of the unique 360-degree format of this presentation, Guests may experience the sensation of movement.

Facts/History
The Hotel du Canada is an example of forced perspective, it looks six stories high, but is actually only 3.
All of the Canadian provinces are represented.
The fir trees you see perched atop the Rockies spend three years adapting to the Florida climate before they go onstage, where they are not actually planted, but rather nestled among rocks in large plastic planters. Each tree has an understudy waiting in the wings, so a quick switch can be made in the event that the tree is struck by disease or hit by lightning.

Reviews

"One of the best attractions at Epcot, probably often overlooked but well worth a visit, it will take your breath away." Karen

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