2 The Canadians

The Canadians T a film was something of a coup for the Canadians.Until then, Canadian health authorities had been largely dependent on American educational films.Now for the first time the Americans were to be dependent on a Canadian production.It was a remarkable turnaround, but it also came with dangers for the Canadians.Growing support for research in the United States threatened a hemorrhage of Canadian scientific talent to American institutions.There was a risk that Challenge would hasten the departure of Canadians for richer American pastures.How ironic that a Canadian gain in public health education films might turn into a loss for Canadian science.Thus, for the Canadian health authorities the dilemma of Challenge was how to collaborate with a potential competitor for scientific talent.The dilemma was particularly acute because one of the rationales for producing educational films was to promote Canadian values, needs, and identity.In the years after the acquisition of political sovereignty from Britain in , several organizations had appeared with expressly nationalistic intent.Among these was the Canadian Society for the Control of Cancer (CSCC)-the first national campaign against cancer, founded in , later known as the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) -which attempted to bring order to the hodgepodge of provincial efforts against the disease.The society came to see movies as a powerful means of indicating the peculiar nature of the threat that cancer posed to Canada, and the distinctive ways Canadians responded or should respond to it.For these reasons, it worried about Canadian dependence on American productions, which it felt were not always suitable for Canadian audiences.A uniquely Canadian campaign was needed, it claimed, that was quite different from that carried out south of the international border.Its cancer movies thus aimed to promote Canadian values and identity as much as to combat cancer.It was unclear, however, how a movie like Challenge was to promote Canadian values and identity, given the collaboration with the Americans and the threat that the United States posed to Canadian scientific ambitions.Yet, as this chapter will show, concerns about the dangers to Canadian cancer research of a film collaboration with the Americans only emerged in with the prospect of a contract with the NCI and MFI.Before then proposals for the film or films that would later mutate into Challenge imagined a quite different sort of production.Instead of a collaboration with the Americans, these proposals envisaged a film or films that would serve the goals of Canadian science, sometimes as a counter to American influence.Canadian cancer research, like that in the US, was expanding as never before during this period, and the goal of the film or films was to promote this expansion and protect it against the much larger and better funded American cancer effort, which tempted Canadian researchers to leave the country.As such it also marked a transformation in Canadian cancer education filmmaking that paradoxically mirrored changes in the United States in the new emphasis it gave to research.Previously the few cancer education films produced in Canada-and the many more it imported-focused on control, encouraging Canadians, like their American counterparts, to undergo routine surveillance and to seek medical assistance the moment something that might be cancer was detected.In the s, however, the focus of Canadian cancer campaigns began to change.While early detection and treatment remained important, they increasingly also focused on cancer research, funding for which-as in the US-increased substantially after the war, bolstered by new organizations founded to promote it and a new partnership between private cancer campaigns and the federal government.Such developments prompted a shift in the public education component of cancer campaigns, which now increasingly focused on research as well as cancer control.This, along with a new enthusiasm for film as a tool of public education in the Department of National Health and Welfare (DNHW) and among nongovernment Canadian cancer organizations, eventually led to funding for the film that would become Challenge.It began life as part of an effort to buttress Canadian research and control against American threats, and later-when the Americans came on board-to focus more on international endeavors. Americans and CanadiansBefore the mid-s, Canadian cancer organizations had taken little interest in producing motion pictures for public educational purposes.A handful of Canadian films were in circulation, generally targeted at provincial rather than

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