Where Is ‘The Way Home’ Filmed?
In Hallmark Channel’s The Way Home, a recently divorced woman with a teenage daughter returns to her hometown. Once there, she reconnects with her estranged mother – and discovers that a pond on the family farm is actually a time portal. The show, which stars Chyler Leigh, Sadie Laflamme-Snow, and Andie MacDowell, marries family drama with a time travel mystery, as Kat (Leigh) tries to discover what happened to her younger brother Jacob, who vanished 20 years earlier.
The Way Home delivers plenty of intriguing twists and emotional moments. And in true Hallmark Channel fashion, it also boasts a picture-perfect setting. Kat, her daughter Alice (Laflamme-Snow), and her mom Del (MacDowell) live in the coastal town of Port Haven, New Brunswick, which boasts quaint coffee shops and a picturesque beach. But where was the show actually filmed?
‘The Way Home’ is filmed in Canada
Like many Hallmark Channel productions, including the original series When Calls the Heart and Ride, The Way Home films in Canada. Production on the series takes place around Toronto, Ontario.
While The Way Home films in various small towns in Ontario, Port Haven itself is fictional.
For season 1, scenes featuring the Roxy movie theater were filmed in Uxbridge, Insauga.com reported. Filming for seasons 1 and 2 also took place in Port Perry, including scenes at Palmer Park and a property known as the Old Mill, which doubles as Port Haven’s Point Cafe in the show, according to DurhamRegion.com.
Why does Hallmark frequently head north of the border to film? Generous tax credits are a lure. So is a deep pool of actors, many of whom have worked on Hallmark productions in the past, noted Streets of Toronto. (For the network’s many Christmas movies, the wintry weather is another advantage.)
‘The Way Home’ pond scenes are shot in an actual pond
In The Way Home, a pond on the Landry farm acts as a portal to the past. Both Kat and Alice can time travel. That means they spend a lot of time jumping in and out of the pond. It’s not a set, Leigh revealed.
“The pond that we film [in], it is disgusting. It is a natural pond full of frogs,” she said at an event ahead of the season 2 premiere (via Us Weekly). “We’ve learned the entire lifecycle of a frog … and whatever other thing was skittering across the surface.”
While The Way Home’s pond is real, underwater shots happen in a pool for a very practical reason.
“It was a lot of thought that went into [shooting those scenes], and it was the only way that you could actually see us clearly because yikes, [it’s] milky and green. Ew, that grossed [me out],” she said.
Fortunately, the actors don’t have to spend too much time in the water, Leigh said in a 2023 interview with Tell-Tale TV.
“Luckily we had incredible stunt doubles to be able to do a lot of that jumping, [because] that pond is freezing,” she said. “I mean breathtakingly cold.”
The Way Home airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Hallmark Channel. Episodes stream the next day on Hallmark Movies Now.
Sources: Insauga.com, DurhamRegion.com, StreetsofToronto.com
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