These honours were conducted annually, except in 1974 when a number of Quebec directors withdrew their participation and prompted a cancellation.
[4] The award was first established in 1949 by the Canadian Association for Adult Education,[1] under a steering committee that included the National Film Board's James Beveridge, the Canadian Foundation's Walter Herbert, filmmaker F. R. Crawley, the National Gallery of Canada's Donald Buchanan and diplomat Graham McInnes.
The awards were also almost totally dominated by the National Film Board, to the point that independent filmmakers sometimes alleged a systemic bias which was itself a contributing factor to the difficulty of building a sustainable commercial film industry in Canada.
[5] Acting awards were introduced in 1968, and then expanded into separate categories for lead and supporting performers in 1970.
[1] In the 1970s, the organization frequently faced crises related to the francophone film industry in Quebec.
[9] Several other filmmakers were also prepared to withdraw in solidarity, although provincial cabinet minister James Auld intervened to dissuade the board from insisting on the cuts.
When Academy publicist Maria Topalovich was preparing a history of the awards for publication in the early 1980s, she found that even the Academy itself had not received complete documentation of the awards' past winners and nominees in the takeover,[7] and instead she had to undertake extensive archival research.