How Maple Ridge became a sought after film location in B.C.

Drake was going to film a music video – and the only place he could shoot it was in Maple Ridge.

Draeven McGowan, Maple Ridge’s senior advisor of film development, said he was initially skeptical when he got a call regarding one of the most famous rappers in the world.

“I thought they were joking with me. I said, ‘Who’s the artist?’ And [my location manager]  said, ‘Oh, it’s Drake.’ And I said, ‘It’s no way, it’s a joke,’” McGowan told The Ridge. 

It wasn’t a joke. Within 16 hours, McGowan and the team out of Maple Ridge’s film office scouted a location, had a wolf wrangler bring wolves in, and a sportscar flown in from Los Angeles. At 11 p.m. the day after McGowan got the call, rappers Drake and Lil Yachty came to Maple Ridge to shoot the music video for their song Another Late Night.

Most municipalities in the area wouldn’t have been able to issue a film permit within 16 hours. But McGowan says Maple Ridge could pull it off on such short notice due to a philosophical shift in how the city has approached film productions in the past five years.

“It was literally following this model of, ‘Why can’t we do this? Let’s do it,” said McGowan.

This ‘why can’t we’ model has accompanied a 167 per cent growth in film revenues in recent years. From 2016 to 2020, the city pulled in  $811,340 from films. From 2021 to 2025, it pulled in $2.3 million (with $2.5 million forecasted by the end of the year). This is all direct revenue to the City of Maple Ridge, coming from things like location fees, permit fees and noise abeyance fees.

He added it also brings in indirect revenue, as film productions spend money in the community and employ about 2,700 Maple Ridge residents.

McGowan said it’s an industry that has social and cultural benefits for Maple Ridge by building its brand and increasing resident pride.

“I moved here when I was 15, and I’ve been able to see Maple Ridge grow as a cool community where now you see Maple Ridge being part of film,” he said.

Alongside Drake, they’ve shot shows with well-known actors like The Last of Us starring Pedro Pascal and Tracker starring Justin Hartley. This year alone, they’ve had about 60 shows filmed at Maple Ridge.

Why can’t we?

McGowan said that since COVID many other municipalities have seen a “retrenchment” in filming, but Maple Ridge has seen an increase.

He says the growth is due to the city’s “why can’t we” mentality. Instead of looking at the film industry for a regulatory lens of “how can we not get this to happen?” They now look at it in terms of how they can support film productions.

The city actively engages with productions, from script breakdowns to supporting shoots with road shutdowns and park access.

“We’re looking at it from an economic development lens,” he said. “How can we get this to happen for [production companies?”

They’ve also created some “operational efficiencies” to streamline the process.

The city went from paper to web forms. That might not seem like a big deal, but it makes a difference over hundreds of days of shoots and the needed documentation, McGowan said.

Maple Ridge also designed free, pre-approved filming plans. It calls it ‘Find a Location’, where production companies have access to number of maps of popular film areas, demonstrating how filming should take place. Before, McGowan said production companies would have to design their own and get them approved.

The city has has a tiered base system of pricing, with different rates for large, medium, and lower scale productions — with the idea that the bigger shows can subsidize the “up-and-coming production[s], like student films or the photo shoots or the small scale independent productions,” said McGowan.