National Film Board of Canada

Based on Wikipedia: National Film Board of Canada

The Factory That Made Films for a Nation

In 1945, tucked away in Canada, sat one of the largest film studios on the planet. Not Hollywood. Not London's Pinewood. A government agency with eight hundred employees, churning out documentaries that reached forty to fifty million viewers every single week.

This was the National Film Board of Canada. And its story begins with a Scottish visionary who believed that movies could change the world—and a government that wasn't entirely sure it wanted the world changed.

Before There Was a Board

The roots stretch back to 1918, when the Canadian government created something called the Exhibits and Publicity Bureau. Think of it as a propaganda office with cameras. Five years later, it became the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau, a name that sounds exactly as bureaucratic as you'd expect.

For years, it puttered along making silent films. Then came the Great Depression, and budgets shriveled. Frank Badgley, who ran the bureau from 1927 to 1941, saw the writing on the wall. Silent films were dying. Talkies were the future. He begged for sound equipment.

He didn't get it until 1934.

By then, every theater in the country had moved on. The bureau had lost its distributors. It was like showing up to a party three hours late and wondering why everyone had already left.

Enter John Grierson

The transformation came through an unlikely chain of events. Ross McLean, working as secretary to Canada's High Commissioner in London, met a Scottish filmmaker named John Grierson. Grierson had essentially invented the documentary film genre—he literally coined the word "documentary." McLean convinced him to come to Canada and assess the government's film situation.

Grierson's 1938 report was damning. The existing bureau was outdated, unfocused, irrelevant. He drafted a new law, the National Film Act, which Parliament passed in May 1939. The National Film Board of Canada was born, at least on paper.

Then came the question of who would run it.

The government offered the job to Ned Corbett. He said no. Months passed. Grierson himself suggested Frank Badgley and Walter Turnbull. Neither got the nod. Finally, Grierson agreed to take the position himself—but only for six months.

He stayed for six years.

Building a Film Empire During Wartime

Grierson didn't just run the new agency. He transformed it into a weapon. World War Two had begun, and suddenly a government film board had purpose: rallying the home front, explaining the war to Canadians, projecting Canada's image abroad.

He brought in Ross McLean as assistant commissioner and Stuart Legg to oversee productions. He merged the old Motion Picture Bureau into the new Board in 1941, despite initial resistance—he'd threatened to resign over the issue. Employment exploded from fifty-five people to nearly eight hundred by war's end.

Grierson organized production into twelve specialized units. There was a unit for animated films, another for agriculture, one for health and rehabilitation, one for industrial relations. Two separate units handled the board's flagship newsreel series: The World in Action and Canada Carries On.

The numbers were staggering. By 1943, The World in Action was reaching thirty to forty million viewers per month in Britain and the United States alone. Canada Carries On had an audience of over two million. The board's newsreels reached forty to fifty million viewers weekly by 1944.

This wasn't Netflix. This was the 1940s. Those numbers represented a significant fraction of the English-speaking world.

Rural Cinema Circuits

Grierson understood something crucial: most Canadians didn't live near movie theaters. The country was vast, rural, scattered across an enormous landmass. If the films couldn't come to the people, the people would never see them.

So the board created traveling film circuits. Starting in 1942, projectionists drove across the countryside, setting up screenings in community halls, schools, church basements. By 1945, ninety-two circuits crisscrossed the country, each visiting twenty communities monthly. Average attendance: over two thousand people per circuit.

Imagine a time before television, before the internet, before smartphones. A projector arrives in your small prairie town. The community gathers. For an hour or two, you're connected to the wider world—to the war effort, to other Canadians, to ideas bigger than your immediate surroundings.

This was soft power before anyone called it that.

What Grierson Wouldn't Do

Despite building one of the world's largest film operations, Grierson had no interest in making feature films. He thought Canada's market was too small to support a homegrown movie industry. Better to work with the Americans, he argued. The theatrical film business was international, dependent on deals with Hollywood.

He even traveled to Los Angeles in 1944, sending scripts to American studios for possible co-productions. This pragmatism—or defeatism, depending on your perspective—would shape Canadian film policy for decades.

Grierson also ran an unusual shop. Employees were contracted for just three months at a time. He believed job security killed creativity. Most people stayed longer anyway, but the precarious structure said something about his philosophy: the work mattered more than the workers' comfort.

The Politics of Propaganda

Making films for the government during wartime meant navigating politics. Grierson's films were supposed to rally support for the Allied cause, but some pushed boundaries that made Ottawa nervous.

Inside Fighting Russia praised the Soviet Union—Canada's wartime ally, but still communist. Critics accused it of supporting revolution. Balkan Powderkeg criticized British policy in southeastern Europe. Grierson's bosses in the Canadian government were not pleased.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States opened a file on Grierson in 1942. The FBI considered The World in Action too left-wing. One Canadian official, Leo Dolan, accused Grierson of being Jewish (he wasn't) and a socialist (closer to the mark). These were meant as smears, deployed as political weapons.

Then came the Gouzenko Affair.

In September 1945, a Soviet cipher clerk named Igor Gouzenko defected in Ottawa, revealing a massive Soviet spy ring operating in Canada. Among those implicated was Freda Linton, one of Grierson's secretaries. Suddenly the National Film Board looked less like a patriotic success story and more like a potential security threat.

The Progressive Conservative Party accused the board of harboring subversives, wasting money, and operating as a monopoly. Grierson himself was investigated. He was cleared, but the damage was done. The postwar world was turning cold, and the film board's freewheeling wartime culture was becoming a liability.

The Purge

Grierson left in 1945. Ross McLean, his protégé, became commissioner. Almost immediately, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police came calling.

They had discovered that an employee in the Production Division—a communist—had photographed top-secret military equipment. The Department of National Defence cut ties with the board entirely, refusing to let it make any more military films. The Mounties declared the National Film Board a "vulnerable agency" and handed McLean a list of thirty-six employees they wanted fired.

McLean refused. Fire them for what, exactly? Being suspected of political sympathies? Without proof of actual disloyalty, he wouldn't do it.

This principled stand cost him his job. In 1950, the government replaced him with William Arthur Irwin, editor of Maclean's magazine. Irwin compromised: only three employees were fired instead of thirty-six. But the message was clear. The freewheeling Grierson era was over.

The French Question

Canada has two official languages, but you wouldn't have known it from the early Film Board. In 1949, the board released seventy English films. French films? Four.

This imbalance reflected deeper tensions. Vincent Paquette became the board's first French-Canadian filmmaker in 1941, directing La Cité de Notre-Dame—the first French-language film actually made in-house rather than dubbed. By 1945, seventeen French-Canadians worked at the board, and about a quarter of the budget went to French productions.

But the culture remained overwhelmingly English. French-speaking employees earned less than their English counterparts. Production decisions flowed through English-speaking executives. The Massey Commission, studying Canadian culture in 1949, called for improvement. So did Gratien Gélinas, a French-Canadian member of the board's governors.

Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis responded by banning NFB films from schools, claiming they were communist propaganda. This was mostly political theater—Duplessis was a conservative nationalist who distrusted anything from Ottawa—but it meant the board had enemies on multiple fronts.

The Montreal Move

Since its founding, the National Film Board had been scattered across multiple buildings in Ottawa. Plans to build a proper headquarters had been drawn up during the war but never acted upon.

Commissioner Irwin pushed for a move to Montreal. His reasoning was practical: Montreal was bilingual, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was building two television stations there. If the board was going to serve both English and French Canada, it made sense to be in a city that spoke both languages.

The politics were delicate. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent negotiated directly with Premier Duplessis to smooth the way. The Conservative opposition attacked the rising construction costs. Donald Mulholland, the director of production, reversed his support for the move after Irwin resigned.

Albert Trueman, the new commissioner, waffled. St. Laurent was furious, suspecting sabotage. But the project moved forward anyway. Construction ran from 1953 to 1956, costing $5.25 million. Four hundred employees relocated to Saint-Laurent, Quebec.

The building would serve as headquarters for over sixty years.

A Breakthrough in Color

In 1951, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip toured Canada. The Film Board decided to document the trip using thirty-five millimeter Eastman color film stock—technology so new it wasn't available to the public yet.

The original plan called for a twenty-minute film, two reels. But the footage was too good to cut. The film grew to five reels. Commissioner Irwin met with J.J. Fitzgibbons, president of Famous Players theaters, who agreed to screen all five reels if the board could deliver by Christmas.

They made the deadline. Royal Journey opened in seventeen first-run theaters and eventually played in over twelve hundred Canadian cinemas. Two million Canadians saw it—a record at the time. It screened in forty other countries. The film cost eighty-eight thousand dollars to make and earned a profit of a hundred and fifty thousand.

John Grierson, watching from the sidelines, said Irwin had "saved the Film Board."

Television Changes Everything

In 1953, the board created its first television series in partnership with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Window on Canada and On the Spot. By 1955, half of all NFB productions were made for television broadcast.

But the relationship was tense. The CBC worried that too much NFB content would stunt its own production capabilities. Most filmmakers at the board, trained in theatrical documentary tradition, looked down on television as a lesser medium.

Two forward-thinking employees, Sydney Newman and Gordon Burwash, had been sent to the United States in 1948 to study television production. When they returned, the board still wasn't ready to embrace the new technology. Both men left to join the CBC instead.

The rivalry grew petty. In 1956, the CBC produced Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans with an explicit prohibition on NFB involvement. They rejected a board proposal for a series based on Jake and the Kid.

Two government-funded organizations, supposedly serving the same public, fighting over territory. It was very Canadian.

Seeking Legitimacy

The Massey Commission of 1949 gave the board a chance to argue for its future. In its submission, the NFB asked for three things: a proper headquarters, increased budgets, and transformation into a Crown corporation—a status that would give it more independence from political interference.

The private film industry pushed back hard. The Association of Motion Picture Producers and Laboratories of Canada called the Crown corporation request evidence of an "expansionist, monopolistic psychology." Private companies couldn't compete with an agency that paid no taxes and was exempt from import tariffs.

These arguments would echo for decades. Was the National Film Board a necessary public service, filling gaps the market wouldn't? Or was it unfair government competition, crowding out private enterprise?

The commission sided with the board. Crown corporation status was granted. The new National Film Act took effect in October 1950.

Commissioners Come and Go

The Film Board burned through leaders. Grierson stayed six years. McLean was pushed out after refusing to fire suspected communists. Irwin resigned in 1953, frustrated that administrative duties kept him from the creative work he loved. Trueman lasted until 1957, when he quit amid French-Canadian criticism to become head of the Canada Council—a more prestigious position he'd been promised when he took the commissioner job.

Trueman suggested Gérard Pelletier as his replacement. Instead, the government chose Guy Roberge, a former Liberal member of Quebec's legislature who had helped write sections of the Massey report. Roberge was the first French-Canadian commissioner, and his appointment finally quieted critics who saw the board as an English institution.

A Minister Who Didn't Care

Ellen Fairclough became the minister responsible for the National Film Board in May 1958. She never watched a single film the board produced. She declined to interfere in NFB matters, despite pressure from former minister Jack Pickersgill, who believed ministers should take responsibility for the agencies under them.

Whether this was neglect or wise restraint depends on your philosophy of government. The board had been battered by political interference throughout its history. Perhaps a minister who simply left it alone was exactly what it needed.

Two Solitudes Under One Roof

Pierre Juneau arrived at the board in 1953, sent by Irwin to study British film practices. What he found when he returned was an organization where English and French speakers could barely communicate with each other.

He proposed a solution: separate English and French production branches. Each linguistic community would have autonomy over its own creative work. The structure was approved in 1958, with additional French-language production units finally established.

This parallel structure—two film boards operating under one organizational umbrella—would define the NFB for generations. It reflected Canada's broader political accommodation between its two founding peoples, the uneasy partnership that held the country together.

The Legacy Machine

Since its founding, the National Film Board has produced over forty-three thousand films and won more than five thousand awards. It pioneered techniques in documentary and animation that influenced filmmakers worldwide. Norman McLaren's abstract animations. The Challenge for Change program that gave cameras to marginalized communities. Groundbreaking work in stereoscopic 3D and interactive web documentaries.

The board also launched careers. Denys Arcand, who would later direct The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions. Claude Jutra, whose Mon Oncle Antoine is often called the greatest Canadian film ever made. Generations of animators who learned their craft in NFB studios.

But numbers and awards don't capture the stranger truth: a government agency became one of the most important cultural institutions in Canadian history. It shaped how Canadians saw themselves and how the world saw Canada.

The Paradox of State Art

Can a government make great art? The question seems almost designed to produce the answer "no." Bureaucracies are risk-averse. Politicians prefer propaganda to provocation. Committees don't create masterpieces.

Yet somehow, in a cold northern country with a small population and an even smaller film market, the National Film Board proved otherwise. It made documentaries that won Academy Awards. It created animated shorts that are still screened in film schools. It built an archive that preserves Canadian life across a century.

The secret may have been the tension itself. Artists chafing against government oversight. Politicians nervous about what the filmmakers might say. Commissioners trying to shield creative work from political pressure while keeping the budget flowing. The friction generated heat, and sometimes that heat produced something brilliant.

John Grierson, the visionary Scot who started it all, believed that documentary film could be a democratic art form—a way to show ordinary people the world they lived in, to make them informed citizens. He built an institution to pursue that vision, then watched it outlive him, outlive the Cold War accusations, outlive the analog era itself.

Today the National Film Board reports to Parliament through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It still makes films. It still wins awards. It has adapted to streaming and web distribution, to a world Grierson couldn't have imagined.

Whether government should be in the film business remains debatable. That this particular government agency made films worth watching is not.