George Stroumboulopoulos on what makes Canadian movies and TV shows special

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What are the Canadian shows and movies that defined you? The ones that shaped your perspective on not only yourself, but the world?

Broadcaster George Stroumboulopoulos is travelling across the country, camera in tow, to ask Canadians just that. The road trip is part of Made | Nous, a Canada Media Fund initiative in partnership with Telefilm Canada that’s been running since 2019.

This year’s campaign, The Stories That Made Us, launched July 25 in Vancouver and will stop in six provinces and territories. Stroumboulopoulos wrapped up Sept. 4 at the Toronto International Film Festival’s opening night gala, where he’ll present a first look at the docuseries chronicling his journey.

He spoke with us about what makes Canadian shows and films so special and the elusive Canadian identity.

So what Canadian films and TV shows made you?
I was heavily inspired by Bruce McDonald’s films. SCTV was big when I was a kid. There was a show called The Hilarious House of Frightenstein that I loved. And there was a show called Seeing Things that I dug.

Travelling across Canada for Made, what shows and movies came up?
I think younger Canadians don’t realize how strange it was to grow up in a country where you pretty much only had two or three channels for a long time. So what comes up all the time is The Beachcombers, The Littlest Hobo and Mr. Dressup.
And I didn’t realize how big shows like Arthur and Franklin are to generations of kids. Caillou too, but I get the sense that everybody thinks Caillou sucks. He was so whiny and annoying. I talked to a 15-year-old soccer player in Fredericton who was born in Mexico. She said that when she goes onto the soccer pitch and starts overthinking things, she just reminds herself, “Be like, Franklin. Don’t be like Caillou.”

Why are Canadian films and TV important now?
I don’t believe that the Canadian identity needs to be one thing. I think it should be as many 40 million things — one for each individual. So what I like about Canadian content is that it is profoundly different from what they make elsewhere. It’s really special. We have the ability to tell a lot of different stories.
If we don’t tell them, nobody will, and we’re just going to get this sloppy, boring, corporate, dominant narrative that I just don’t think is interesting. One of my favourite things about Canada is that it’s a strange country, and we ought to celebrate how strange and how varied it is.

What other shows did people mention?
I’ve done a lot of things in this country in my 32 years of being in media, and MuchMusic comes up more than anything I’ve done.

It was our version of MTV.
Totally. But what we were making at MuchMusic was a trillion times better than what they were making on MTV. Because everybody was taking the audience’s time seriously. We weren’t trying to sell them stuff, even if we were promoting videos. It was honestly a bunch of music fans and culture fans trying to share cool stuff. And I’m not just talking about my era. MTV never had Rachel Perry and Rick Campanelli and Master T and Nardwuar. Legends.

Going back to Made, it seems very timely to focus on the Canadian identity.
We knew it would be the right time for all the reasons that you’re referring to. But we weren’t doing this in February 2025, when everybody was all up in their feelings. This is much later when things had settled a bit. People had time to think about why they feel the way they do. But no one really leaned into, well, what did we watch?
Because stories are how people develop their narratives, live their narratives, change their narratives. Humans live a communal experience. We need this kind of stuff. And it’s not just what you watched — it’s what you did with it. I spoke to a guy in a motorcycle club in Calgary. There’s a sense of freedom and adventure, and there’s a direct line to watching The Littlest Hobo when they were kids.
Same thing with a guy in Lethbridge, Alta. He builds cars and he’s a YouTube content creator. The Littlest Hobo gave him a sense of adventure, but it was also watching The Red Green Show and realizing that, “Hey, you can do it too. You don’t need all that fancy stuff.”

What else do you want people to get from the campaign?
We have an awful lot in common in this country. Exploring the impact of a TV show or a movie doesn’t fix the problems of the world, but it opens a dialogue. And anything we can do to get people to see what they agree on is pretty cool.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.