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When I photographed people in Covid-19 intensive care units earlier this year, I was protected by four plastic sets: glasses, safety glasses, face shield and viewfinder. But there is no protection for the pain that you take.

I recently took pictures for a Times article about Covid treatment as a last resort called ECMO that documented coronavirus patients and the health professionals who care for them at the Providence Saint John Health Center in Santa Monica, California. The families have allowed me to share the darkest moments of their lives.

I felt privileged to be let into these sacred spaces. As a journalist, I see it as my responsibility to have the emotional bandwidth to be with people in moments that most of society cannot deal with. Despite safety guidelines that discouraged long periods of time in the intensive care unit, I would spend hours with each patient and linger for extended periods of time to get a feel for the person and bring out an emotional spectrum of moments.

The verbal interaction helps me connect with those I photograph. During this task, some people were either awake or unable to speak, and the strongest connection was often silent.

I stood next to Alfred Sablan’s bed, 25, imagining the sound of his voice and trying to feel the gentle way his mother had described. I leaned over Dr. David Gutierrez, 62, a doctor who had become a patient himself, and reminded him of who I was. He looked back, unable to answer with words, but I felt our connection through classic rock playing on his iPad.

From time to time a member of staff would come in to look for Mr. Sablan or Dr. See Gutierrez. “Are you all right?” asked a nurse when she opened the door from Dr. Gutierrez’s room opened. He nodded “yes”.

In the midst of all the pain, there were memories of grace.

There are countless examples of this Canadian urban stunt doubling, often pieced together via tight shots and computer graphics. Toronto plays Tokyo in “Pacific Rim,” Chicago in the movie “Chicago,” Baltimore in “Hairspray” and Boston in much of “Good Will Hunting.”

Vancouver plays New York in the Jackie Chan movie “Rumble in the Bronx” (leading to an infamous oversight, in which the city has mountains lurking behind it), and it plays Seattle, Budapest and Mumbai in “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.” Montreal has played Marseille and Montrichard, France, in “Catch Me if You Can” and Paris in “X-Men: Days of Future Past”; Washington, D.C., in “White House Down”; and Brooklyn in the movie “Brooklyn.”

Particularly popular filming locations include the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, a beloved Art Deco complex in Toronto that has played sinister locations in movies like “Undercover Brother” (portraying The Man’s headquarters) and “In the Mouth of Madness” (a mental hospital). The University of Toronto has played Harvard, M.I.T. and Princeton, among many other schools.

The reasons for Canada’s prime status as a film “impostor” are many, Mr. Theodore said: tax breaks, lower costs, diverse landscapes, high-quality shooting and editing facilities, friendliness and a general unfamiliarity with Canada among international movie audiences, allowing it to easily stand in without being recognized.

Another factor, according to the exhibition’s designer, Thomas Balaban, an architect and professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Montreal, is that Canada’s cities are more generic than those in many countries, particularly those in the United States, which Canada plays most often.

“Everything goes through a design review board,” said Mr. Balaban, whose architecture firm, TBA, is spearheading the exhibition’s design as well. “There’s this feeling that the cities are designed by committee.”