Louis Minier

Lumière operator

Two Frenchman, Louis Minier and Louis Pupier - the former a naval officer, the latter his assistant - presented Canada's first public film show on 28 June, 1896 in Montreal using a Lumière CinĂ©matographe. This was a full month before the screening usually given as Canada's film premiere. Over the next two months Minier and Pupier played at the Palace Theatre in Montreal, before performing at the Toronto Industrial Exposition and then at another exposition in Montreal, and finally touring the main towns of Quebec. Minier returned to France in the winter of 1896, leaving Pupier to continue touring with an aide named Jackson, but the senior man returned in the spring of the following year with a new assistant, Fauré. In mid-summer they were joined by FĂ©lix Mesguich, following his tour of the United States, who showed his Lumière films at the Palace Theatre. Mesguich was followed by other Lumière agents: M. Prosper later that year, and by F.J. Blanchard in 1900. Meanwhile, Minier himself in 1898 had become a professor at Laval University in Montreal.

Stephen Bottomore