If a monument is ever built to Richard Condie and the Manitoba animation scene, there's an old animation stand in a converted National Film Board storage room that would make a perfect centerpiece.

Now that Richard Condie has switched to computers for La Salla, the old black-piped machine may have few glory days left. But its role in the creation of a local industry is undeniable.

From a PGA spot for Toastmaster bread.

Without that animation stand, there probably would not be a "Richard Condie--Two-time Oscar Nominee." No Getting Started, no Pigbird, no Big Snit. No Cat Came Back by Cordell Barker either, nor Get a Job by Brad Caslor. And certainly no Primiti Too Taa by Ed Ackerman.

As an oversized hand-me-down, the animation stand has had a weird history. Like a lot of Canadiana, it has passed from private to public ownership. From Neil McInnes and Kenn Perkins to the Winnipeg Film Group and now the Manitoba Society of Independent Animators.

The key link in the chain of ownership is Kenn Perkins, the king of the K-Tel commercials. It was at his animation shop that Caslor and Condie and others learned their craft. They swept floors and emptied wastebaskets there just to get a chance to see their own cels under the old Bolex on the animation stand's housing.

Perkins bought the stand from its original owners, Phillips, Gutkin and Associates (PGA) just when it seemed that a glorious era in Winnipeg animation history would disappear without a trace.

The Biggest and the Busiest
During the 1950s, PGA was among the biggest and busiest animation companies in North America. The fact that they accomplished this in Winnipeg, a city of maybe 300,000 people on the bald-headed Canadian prairie, speaks volumes about the creativity and can-do stubbornness that Condie also exhibits.

PGA got into the animation business in 1952, four years after John Phillips and Harry Gutkin formed a partnership to provide live-action industrial films and print advertising for western Canadian businesses. John and Harry were quite an unlikely pair. Gutkin, from Winnipeg's ethnic North-end, was a commercial artist and part owner of a publishing firm. Phillips was the son of a renowned Canadian painter, a quiet man from the WASP-ish south end of town, who left a job as layout man and fashion photographer for the Eaton's catalogue.

A mexican-themed spot for B.F. Goodrich

The Canadian equivalent of the great Sears and Montgomery-Ward catalogues, the Eaton's catalogue was one reason that postwar Winnipeg was the third largest advertising center in North America. It was a good time and, oddly, the right place for PGA to get into the animation business.

PGA did not make cartoons, although they eventually tried to. Their first venture was a movie for the co-ops that were so important to western Canadian development. What's Co-operation All About? was a 20-minute promo, half animation and half live-action. Rudimentary in design and structure, the movie is significant mainly because it forced PGA to invest in the now-historic animation stand.

The specifications for the stand came from the National Film Board. That's more ironic than it appears. For, at the time the NFB was justly famous for Norman McLaren's cameraless (and, therefore, non-animation stand) films. The stand was then built by a local mechanic for Trans-Canada Air Lines (now Air Canada), Harold Rasmussen. Sturdy and reliable as a DC-3, the stand would be crucial to PGA's main claim to fame--hundreds of animated TV commercials.