A Pictorial History of the Canadian Film Awards

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

This valuable and attractive book represents an enormous amount of research on the part of its author, Maria Topalovich, who became the publicist for the Academy of Canadian Cinema shortly after its 1979 incorporation and who is today its Director of Communications. So muddled and scanty were the records through which she patiently searched that there was even conflicting documentation about the year in which film awards were first presented in Canada, and who presented them. (It was 1949, an early date that may surprise many readers. One account said that the Prime Minister was the first presenter. In fact, Mr. St. Laurent gave out the awards in the second year.)

One becomes sometimes angry and perhaps a bit sad reading this book. The year-by-year summaries presented here tell, for example, of an extraordinary number of disputes, often over categories, or about who should pass judgment on what and how. And always there were the “inevitable difficulties of developing two culturally distinct film industries within one country.” Once, a court injunction nearly stopped the annual affair. Another time, there was a last-minute cancellation, and for five years the public presentations were abandoned in favour of private industry luncheons. The first televised ceremony (1966) was apparently so dreadful that the awards were not on television again for years. The award categories changed regularly; “Filmed Commercials” was once a grouping, and amateur films were also recognized. (The first amateur award went to 17-year-old Claude Jutra, whose later credits included Mon Oncle Antoine, which won awards in eight categories 21 years later.) Once, a Special Award was given to a member of the Ontario Board of Censors! And it was not until the twentieth year that awards were first given for performances by actors.

Topalovich also gives Canadians much of which they can be proud. The book contains some history of filmmaking in Canada, and one reads with surprise that the first deluxe movie house in North America opened in Montreal eight years before there was anything comparable in New York. There is a list of the chairmen of the Canada Film Awards from 1949 to 1984, and the masters of ceremonies at all presentations are also listed. Five indices cite various films and award-winning filmmakers. And the book is, of course, generously illustrated; Donald Sutherland describes it in a brief personal introduction as “a family scrapbook.” The text is informative and at times critical; Topalovich does not hesitate to say so if she believes that inferior films were given awards.

An epilogue, praising an early 1984 government policy which, among other things, encouraged the CBC into more film production with private industry, unintentionally reminds one of the changes that have taken place in the relationship between the public purse and the performing arts since this good book was completed.