Dreamland: A History of Early Canadian Movies 1895-1939

The film which "Dreamland" describes as the first Canadian film, "The Kiss" from 1896, upon further investigation is in fact an American Edison production which was quite notorious in its day due to its sensational subject matter. It appears frequently and under several different titles in references charting the beginnings of the cinema.

The reason we would automatically classify it as Canadian is that the Broadway star who appears in it, May Irwin, is from Whitby, Ontario. Presumably she is the first Canadian on film.