Snowmobile drama films in rural Manitoba

This winter, rural Manitoba is playing itself in a feature film called Northern Lights, a gritty coming-of-age drama with a backdrop of frozen rivers and small-town snowmobile tracks. Part of the filming will take place at the Beauséjour snowmobile racetrack and in the community of St. Jean, where winter is not a season so much as a sport.

The movie follows Polly, an 18-year-old snowmobile racer trying to go pro and outrun the gravitational pull of a small town that keeps tugging her back by the parka hood. There’s an unexpected pregnancy, a grandmother with a gambling problem, a best friend in the drug trade and a healthy dose of betrayal and violence. However, the real star is the snowmobiling.

Helping bring that world to the screen is Doug Godard, a longtime snowmobiler and member with Border Valley Snow Goers, and a man who has been riding since the age of six. It’s a detail he mentions not to boast, but because it explains everything else.

“I’m 66 now,” Godard said, casually dropping the fact that he’s spent 60 winters on a sled, which in Manitoba qualifies as a postgraduate degree. “I taught my kids, and now I’m teaching my grandkids.”

Godard was contacted after producers went looking for a filming location within about 50 miles of Winnipeg, close enough for logistics, far enough for authenticity. Border Valley Snow Goers pointed them in his direction, confident that if anyone could deliver the real thing, it would be someone who knows where the trails are, who grooms them, and who understands that winter here is a community activity, not a backdrop.

By Christmas Eve, the call came. The filmmakers wanted St. Jean.

Since then, Godard has met with producers several times, walking them through what real snowmobiling looks like. Not the glossy television version filmed in Quebec or Ontario, but the family-oriented, club-run, community-built reality of Manitoba riding. Border Valley Snow Goers groomers will be used to build practice tracks for actors. Trails, park roadways and campsites will be shaped into film sets. Even the ice road crossing on the river, dotted with fishing shacks, may appear on screen.

“Our community will provide support,” Godard said. “Local talent, facilities for meals and warm-ups, the park, it’s more than just me, it’s the whole community.”

That sense of collective ownership matters. St. Jean, like many small Manitoba communities, doesn’t shut down when the snow falls. It doubles down. There are winter carnivals, ice-fishing derbies, warm-up shelters, informal trails everyone rides, and kids who learn early that cold is not an excuse but an invitation.

For Godard, the hope is simple: that the film gets the culture right.

“They asked a lot of questions,” he said. “And I’ve been able to answer them. I’ve been doing this my whole life.”

» Winnipeg Sun