Canada's professional ballet had humble origins. Aside from some touring companies which have visited Canada since 1816, Canada did not have any national ballet companies until the 1930s. That was when teachers like Russian Boris Volkoff opened up studios, which would produce some of the first Canadian ballet superstars. Ballerinas such as Lynn Seymour, Patricia Wilde and Melissa Hayden gained international acclaim, despite being forced to dance outside Canada due to a lack of professional ballet companies located within the country.

Finally, in 1938 a club was started by ballet teachers Gwyneth Lloyd and Betty Farrally, which would become Canada's first ballet company 11 years later. It was named the Winnipeg Ballet until 1953, when it became the first ballet company in the British Commonwealth to be granted the use of "royal" in its official title.

Encouraged by the growing success of the Winnipeg Ballet, British dancer and choreographer Celia Franca was recruited by ballet fans in Toronto to start the National Ballet of Canada in 1951. Within the next ten years she also co-founded the National Ballet School of Canada, naming former British teacher Betty Oliphant as founding principal.

Les Ballets Canadiens was established in 1958 in Montreal by Ludmilla Chiariaeff, a former Bolshoi Ballet prima ballerina. After that, smaller companies opened up throughout the country; The Alberta Ballet in the late 1960s, and Ballet British Columbia in 1986 among others.

Canadian ballet community is comparatively young, yet in less than a century it has managed to produce a crop of internationally recognized dancers; including Veronica Tennant, Evelyn Hart, Karen Kain, Frank Augustyn and Rex Harrington, and world-renowned choreographers; including Brian Macdonald, Fernand Nault, Jean Grand-Ma�Rtre, Norbert Vesak, John Alleyne, Mark Godden and James Kudelka.