Points of Interest
The Infamous Markdale
The town’s “15 Minutes of Fame, boasts of a 1958 ‘B’ film produced by Regal Films in Markdale 
titled Wolf Dog, the story of a dog trained to hunt wolves, starring Allison Hayes and Jim Davis. The film was a Western movie, directed and produced by Sam Newfield. It was filmed in August 1957 and also co-starred Austin Willis, a Canadian actor. Several locals were offered a chance to be unpaid ‘extras’. Among those were locals such as Paul Hutton, Jerry Bartley, Constable Clarence Bowins, David Jackson, Officer Jack Johnston, Ron Wyvill and Don Wyvill.
While not an artistic or commercial success, the film is noteworthy in that it was created almost 40
years before Telefilm Canada and federal government subsidies enabled big-name movies to be filmed in Canadian locales. Markdale residents were delighted to have Hollywood make a film in their town.
It was hoped a film set in "The Great North Country" would be a crossover hit in the U.S. and the Commonwealth, both lucrative movie markets. For reasons unknown, the film disappeared from the public eye for almost 50 years. One interesting, though unsubstantiated, rumor suggested one of the main actors wanted all traces of the film destroyed. The only known copies of the movie are an incomplete version stored at the National Archives of Canada and a complete version at the U.S. Library of Congress. All distribution copyrights belong to 20th Century Fox.
