One Man’s Documentary

“This is perhaps the best first-person read available about the early NFB … it’s like picking up a 1940s issue of The New Yorker.”

– Seth Feldman, author of The Canadian Film Reader

“McInnes’s writing is highly engaging, with a wryness and eye for the incongruous similar to those of Charles Ritchie. His work consists in large measure of observant portraits of many of his co-workers, larded with anecdotes, some of which bring valuable insights into the film-making processes of the board. The prose is often unforgettable. …Gene Walz is to be congratulated for bringing this little-known manuscript to the light of day.”

– David Clandfield, University of Toronto Quarterly, vol 76.1, 2007

“Perhaps the most intimate account we have of Grierson … a precious fragment of history, rescued at last.”

– Robert Fulford, National Post

“Walz has rescued this book from archival obscurity…. a pleasure to read and provides insight into the complexities of history.”

– Canadian Journal of Film Studies

“Because of his relative obscurity, as well as the thirty-five-year delay of publication, not to mention the sixty years that have elapsed since the recounted events took place, this memoir has the feel of a time capsule. Innocent of the debates that have ensued in subsequent years about the place of the Film Board in Canadian film history, McInnes writes with an enthusiasm infused by his memories of youth, new technology, and the sense of purpose provided by the war that is often quite engaging. At times his frank assessments of many aspects of the NFB are downright surprising. Take, for example, this admission of ambivalence about Grierson’s watchword, non-theatrical documentary film: ‘Though Grierson was himself a born teacher and evangelist, and though it was an article of faith with him that film, documentary film, was the great teaching and information medium of the future, he could never get us really excited over non-t[heatrical]’ (48, italics in original). Admissions such as these, along with often racy stories about NFB employees and their circle, give a vivid and not entirely positive picture of working at the Board, which seems all the more compelling as a result.”

– Canadian Historical Review, 87.2 (2006) 349-351