“Hollywood North” And Other Cities to Visit in Canada

If you want to visit the sites of some of your favorite TV shows, you might think you have to travel to New York, Los Angeles, or another major U.S. city. But consider an alternative: Canada. It might sound strange, but several shows set in the U.S. were actually filmed in Canada, mainly in the Toronto and Vancouver areas. This happens so frequently that Vancouver has even earned the nickname “Hollywood North.” Although Clark Kent famously landed in Kansas, the CW show Superman & Lois was filmed in Surrey and Vancouver, both cities in British Columbia, Canada. Multiple superhero shows for the CW were filmed in Canada as well. Smallville, Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Batwoman were also filmed in British Columbia.  

Any Stephen King fan knows that his novel, It, was set in Derry, Maine (as were the film adaptations). However, the upcoming prequel series, It: Welcome to Derry, was filmed in the Ontario cities of Toronto, Port Hope, and Hamilton. The 2022 series Dead Zone, based on another Stephen King novel, also takes place in Maine but was filmed mostly in Vancouver. The final season was filmed in Montreal, Quebec. Canada substitutes for Maine in quite a few shows. The 2015 series Haven was filmed throughout Nova Scotia, while the 2019 series Nancy Drew was filmed in Vancouver. 

The fictional city of Riverdale is implied to be in upstate New York, but the CW series of the same name was also filmed in Vancouver, as was the Netflix series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (which is set one town over from Riverdale in fictional Greendale). Shows set in Washington, D.C. feel like they should be as American as they come, but that’s not always the case. Designated Survivor may center around the U.S. government, but only establishing shots were filmed in the U.S. The show was primarily filmed in Toronto, with additional scenes filmed in two other Ontario cities, Hamilton and Cambridge. 

Don’t trust the title to tell you a show’s filming location either. Despite what the name suggests, the 2022 series Devil in Ohio was not filmed in Ohio. Production actually took place in Vancouver. The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh sounds like it must have been filmed in Pennsylvania, but only a few scenes were filmed in the U.S.  The majority were filmed in Toronto. The Netflix Original Ginny & Georgia begins with the Miller family moving to Massachusetts, but was filmed in Cobourg, Ontario. The girls of Firefly Lane, another Netflix original, supposedly grew up around Seattle, but filming took place 2 hours away in Burnaby, British Columbia. So if you’ve ever wanted to travel to New York without dealing with all those pesky New Yorkers (I say this as a pesky New Yorker myself), consider Toronto instead. According to TV producers, they’re basically the same thing.