Ireland Bros.’ Pan-American Electric Carnival: Canadians’ border-crossing circuits of early cinema

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ABSTRACT Early cinema exhibitors George H. and Egerton L. Ireland were better known in Jamaica and Trinidad than in their homeland of Canada. Named the Pan-American Electric Carnival, after a failed bid to show moving pictures at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, between 1900 and 1908 they toured Canada, the United States, across the Caribbean and into South America. Almost absent from Canadian film history, los hermanos Ireland are mentioned in at least eight national and local film histories from across Latin America, and even in a US history. Yet, few of these recognize connections to each other, let alone the brothers’ roots in Canada. I take the Ireland brothers’ peripatetic travels throughout the Western hemisphere as a curious case that is uniquely Canadian. Although Ireland Bros.’ motivations are unknowable, their inter-colonial journeys can only partly be explained by wanderlust, seeking escape from rural Canadian roots. I propose their significance is the provision of modern entertainment that was not simply a conduit of British colonialism nor merely a channel for American imperialism. Instead, I conclude speculatively that the brothers’ circuits of cinema along Pan-American trade routes reflect an ethos of Pan-Americanism emergent at the turn of the twentieth century.