Nelvana 30th Anniversary Profile

If it is ever made into a animated feature film, it would be billed as a Canadian epic-the amazing true story of how three ambitious young men, born of the freewheeling '60s counterculture, worked hand-to-mouth out of a cramped Toronto basement, followed their creative bliss, stumbled, survived, and then succeeded beyond their own-or anyone else's-wildest dreams.

As a prospective film script, the 30-year corporate history of the Nelvana animation studio would read as an over-the-top piece of adventure fiction, a mythic rags-to-riches fairy tale that could have sprung from the fevered imaginations of its own homegrown team of inspired animators. Yet its dynamic lead characters-Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert and Clive Smith-and its roller coaster plot-the transformation of a tiny production studio into a thriving, world class, CAN$600-million, vertically-integrated children's entertainment powerhouse-are as real as the True North itself.

The facts speak for themselves: Today, Nelvana boasts the largest independent classic and contemporary animated character portfolios in the world. Through its global production and distribution business, the 600-employee company has completed over 60 major productions and delivers its programming to over 160 countries worldwide. Owned by Canadian media powerhouse Corus Entertainment, Nelvana's comprehensive program library contains over 1,650 cumulative half-hour episodes, including such award-winning television and feature film properties as Care Bears, Franklin, Maurice Sendak's Little Bear, Babar, Rolie Polie Olie and Pippi Longstocking. Its rapidly growing Branded Consumer Products business arm includes lucrative operations in children's book publishing and merchandise licensing of its high-profile character brands.

In one of the toughest and most complex of all production businesses, Nelvana today dominates the North American airwaves with 23 animated TV series, pumping out an impressive volume of versatile, high-quality daytime and primetime cartoons that leaves its independent competitors in the dust. Year after year, the Canadian company has garnered a raft of industry awards and built a sterling reputation across the entire global animation industry, maintaining a state-of-the-art production facility in Toronto and expanding offices in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Tokyo and an international distribution arm in Shannon, Ireland. Even its fiercest competitors would concede that Nelvana established and maintains the gold standard for international co-productions.

So the obvious question arises: How has Nelvana managed to succeed when so many others have tried and failed? What's its secret?

Once upon a time

Like many good bedtime stories, this one begins "Once upon a time in the 1960s..." In 1967, Michael Hirsh, who had been making films since high school, fatefully met Patrick Loubert, an 18-year-old general arts student in his first year at York University. Together, they started making films with other students. "As a kid, I always wanted to be Superman or Mickey Mouse," recalls Hirsh. "I found out it was always easier to be Mickey Mouse."

Unlike Hirsh, Loubert had only recently gravitated to film. "I had been hitchhiking in Europe during the previous summer, and I got a ride with an Italian film director visiting locations," he remembers. "I hadn't heard of him. When I got home I looked up his films-it was Gillo Pontecorvo, a brilliant political filmmaker who had directed The Battle of Algiers. That was the beginning for me."

Loubert bought a 16mm Bolex camera and started to play around with it. He was accepted by the London Film School, but decided not to go. Although York did not have a film program, Hirsh and Loubert made several small films as academic essays and projects. Then Hirsh shot a longer-format film with his partner Jack Christie and Tuli Kupferberg, a member of the satirical rock group The Fugs. With the revolutionary 1960s spirit of creative experimentation and freedom of expression reaching its zenith, Hirsh and Loubert, like many of their boomer peers, giddily rode the wave of the zeitgeist.

Loubert quit York in his fourth year, and he and Hirsh went to work for the American film company Cineplast, a producer of commercials using plasticine animation.

When the two left Cineplast, "we didn't have a cent in our pockets," recalls Loubert. "We didn't know what a career was. That first bit of misfortune gave us a renewed desire to follow our own path. Michael and I were certain of what we wanted to do and the spirit with which we wanted to do it."

Even though a film and TV production industry did not really exist in Canada, Hirsh and Loubert decided to start their own company along with friends Jack Christie and Peter Dewdney. In sync with the times, they dubbed it Laff Arts.

"We threw ourselves into the venture without really knowing where it would take us," reflects Loubert. "We were full of energy and dreams, but had no idea what we would be facing, nor were we aware of what we could achieve."

It was then, through a chance phone conversation, that they encountered Clive Smith, an ebullient English animator, artist and musician endowed with an excellent reputation and abounding creativity. A graduate of London's Ealing School of Art, where he earned a degree in Design and Kinetic Art, Smith began his career in 1964 with the small West London animation studio Group Two, animating The Beatles and The Lone Ranger series.

In 1967, after working as a freelancer on the Beatles' animated feature film Yellow Submarine, Smith moved to Canada to work for Al Guest and Vladimir Geotzleman as a senior animator and designer on several short films and commercials. Among his many activities, Smith played in a band called "O" with budding Toronto rock legend Carole Pope, who also painted cels for Al Guest. Today, Guest, the creator of Rocket Robin Hood, is considered one of the founding fathers of Canadian animation.