Nelvana: Animating Canadian Childhoods for 45 Years!

Say, that’s a pretty neat title I just came up with. It should be used for a coffee-table book or something.

Happy Canada Day, everyone! This is a time for animation fans to praise the likes of Norman McLaren, Richard Condle, Cordell Barker, Danny Antonucci, Richard Williams, and the insanely persnickety John Kricfalusi for being born in the Great White North to shake up the animation industry with their edginess, imagination, and creative talent! But today, I’m briefly praising an entire animation studio! One that has played as big of a part of my childhood as Nickelodeon Animation Studio! I would like to call this studio the Disney of Canada, not only because it’s the biggest animation studio of its own home country, but also because a majority of their famous productions tend to be adaptations of existing properties, whether it be children’s books, toys, video games, or an Oscar-winning short.

IT’S NELVANA! Down below is a mini logo history.

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Born in Toronto, Nelvana Limited all started back in 1971, June 23rd. Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert had just graduated from York University, so they decided that establishing an animation studio would a fun way to spend the rest of their lives. When they teamed up with British animator Clive A. Smith, the three of them started to work on a series of animated/live-action shorts called Small Star Cinema for CBC.

Fun fact: the studio was named after a Canadian comic book heroine named Nelvana of the Northern Lights, because Michael, Patrick, and Clive had a fascination with Canadian comics that are now obscure as hell. But it wasn’t until 1978 when the polar bear was first adopted to be their mascot, instead of Nelvana of the Northern Lights. Well, considering how obscure that heroine is, I doubt that a lot of people would mistake the studio for her. It’s probably be the other way around.

In 1977, they began their string of animated specials, including A Cosmic Christmas, The Devil and Daniel Mouse, Easter Fever, Romie-0 and Julie-8, and Take Me Up to the Ball Game. So far, I’ve only seen the second one. Eventually, Nelvana caught the attention of a certain director of a certain movie about a certain galaxy far, far away. Yes, George Lucas loved Nelvana! If you were strong enough to actually remember the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, you might remember those weird animated segments in the middle. That was Nelvana’s doing. They also made the animated series Droids and Ewoks based on Star Wars, from 1985 to 1986.

However, Nelvana’s rise to fame came when they made a deal with American Greetings to produce a feature length film based on the diabetically adorable Care Bear plushies, as well as a few specials based on Strawberry Shortcake. In 1985, The Care Bears Movie proved to be so successful that it infamously beat Disney’s attempt at finding their darker side with The Black Cauldron. On one hand, it’s hilarious; on the other hand, it’s sad and embarrassing. Either way, it’s thanks to the Care Bears why Nelvana is even still alive to this day. After suffering the failure of their first movie, Rock & Rule, the people at Nelvana must have been grateful.

And the rest is history for you to find out on your own time, either through Wikipedia, or the 2001 book The Nelvana Story: Thirty Animated Years, which was coincidentally released on the same day as Braceface.

And now, time for the highlight of this post!

Made with Pixlr Editor on June 23, 2016, Nelvana’s 45th birthday.

This massive, colorful collage, containing exactly 69 Nelvana productions, should be enough to illustrate my strong admiration for them, and how much they mean to me as a Canadian animation aficionado. Recognize any of your favorites? I apologize if they are any I missed. I didn’t want to be biased by only including shows that I either admire or formerly admire. The collage went far enough to include stuff that I either show indifference towards (such as Cyberchase and Pelswick), or haven’t seen at all yet (like A Cosmic Christmas and Fievel’s American Tails).

Whenever I can, I’ll update this post with a list of the cartoons included in the collage in chronological order, as well as my short opinions on the ones I’ve actually seen.

Thanks very much to Michael, Patrick, and Clive, for all the work they’ve done to keep the animation industry in Canada alive for all these decades. However, let’s not forget that Nelvana not only covers for Canada, but for the whole globe as well.