PGA's First Big Break
When CBC television became a coast-to-coast operation in 1954, PGA had already done some local animation ads. So Harry Gutkin took a sample reel to Toronto to impress the Libby's Foods' executives who had just agreed to sponsor National Movie Night on CBC television. With an amusing storyboard for "Quality Control Cops," PGA got their first big break.

The ad proved more expensive than PGA estimated. With no lab facilities in Winnipeg, many flights had to be made across North America to complete the soundtrack, the editing, the final print, and even the live-action "sandwiches" inserted between the animation sequences.

PGA's Wacky Bird spot for Windsor Salt.

To complicate matters, a fast-talking "Hollywood producer" convinced PGA to substitute milk for tomato juice in the black-and-white product closeups. A budget-busting trip to New York to mask and recolor each individual frame of the insert saved the account.

The golden age of PGA was between 1954 and 1960. The company was making between 15 and 30 TV commercials per month. Major accounts included Windsor Salt (whose "Wacky Bird" was Gutkin's favorite creation), Esso Oil, the Bank of Canada, Simonize Wax, Blue Ribbon Tea, Kellogg's Cereals, Chrysler Canada, Kraft Foods, and Libby's. Most of these were exclusively Canadian ads; Kraft, Libby's and Windsor Salt spots also appeared on American television.

Although all ads were done in the spare UPA (United Producers of America) animation style popular at the time, PGA still needed between 25 and 30 animators working full-time to keep up with the pace. Some of the animators came right out of local art schools and apprenticed on the job. Among those who worked at PGA and later went on to even better things were Barrie Nelson (who later set up his own animation operation in Santa Monica, California), Barrie Helmer (John Phillips's brother-in-law, who was recruited from the NFB), Jeff Hale, Jan Kamienski (who became a noted political cartoonist), and, perhaps msot famous of all, Bill Mason (whose canoing and wolf films--especially Cry of the Wild--were among the best-selling NFB documentaries of all time).

PGA is also where Charlie Thorson ended his long career in animation. He spent three months here in 1956, drawing the "fuzzy bunnies" and other cute animals he had perfected as a character designer at Disney, MGM, Warner Bros., Fleischer, Terrytoons, Columbia, and George Pal Studios in the 1930s and 1940s.

Most of PGA's talent, however, was imported from Europe. And this, plus a feature article in the prestigious Swiss magazine Graphis, led to a proposed trans-Atlantic alliance with John Halas and Joy Batchelor, England's premier animators of the time.