A community of accomplished animators from storied Canadian studio Nelvana gathered at Innis Town Hall on January 29, 2026, to celebrate the work of Dale & Dave Cox, longtime creative forces at the company.
The screening was curated by CSI lecturer/Emily Carr University Postdoctoral Fellow Justin Morris, and featured animated shorts, TV ads, government PSAs, and Nelvana-produced episodes from the Dale & Dave Cox collections at the U of T’s Film Library and Media Archives.
“It was an incredible honor to host this celebration of Dale & Dave,” says Morris, who is completing a research project on Canadian commercial animation utilizing the Media Archives collections. “The Coxes’ long careers, which span independent production in Toronto’s nascent animation scene in the 1970s, educational and commercial films for clients such as TVO and the Ontario government, and a stupefying list of cartoons from Nelvana’s Saturday-morning heyday in the 1980s and 90s, are centrally important for appreciating the full depth, vigour, and variety of Canadian animation outside of the well-established legacy of the NFB. With the recent shuttering of Nelvana by Corus Entertainment, and renewed discussions concerning the importance of independently Canadian culture and media, now is the time to reconsider the essential contribution of these hardly “below-the-line” artists.”
Of particular note among the diversity of materials screened at the event were Dave Cox’s award-winning short Symbiosis (1976), which explores perennial municipal issues with the Toronto Islands, and an episode of Inspector Gadget (1983). The Coxes and Nelvana director/writer Dale Schott were part of the team that oversaw production of Gadget’s first season at Tokyo Movie Shinsha, representing an early example of the co-production method that remains common place in the animation industry.
New digital scans of the original 16mm, 35mm, and betacam elements were completed by the Film Library & Media Archive. "The screening event was amazing,” says Media Archivist Christina Stewart, “getting to see the work of Dave and Dale up on screen was a delight. Their humour and love of animation shone through in every film we saw. Getting the opportunity to pull the variety of films from their collection was happy work for me and the Media Archives was more than happy to participate in this tribute to Dave and Dale.”
The highlight of the evening proved to be the Q+A, as a dozen of the Coxes’ former Nelvana colleagues jointly responsible for shows such as The Care Bears Family, Droids/Ewoks, Babar, Franklin, Little Bear, The Magic School Bus, and more, gathered to pay tribute and reminisce. For Dale and Dave Cox, the event was a well-deserved victory lap: “viewing the early animation on a big screen after so many years was a nostalgic trip back in time and made us feel that all our hard work, which we considered so much fun back in the 70s and 80s, was worth it, to become a little bit of animation history. Who would have ever guessed? Thank you to the Media Archives team for their efforts bringing it all back to life from 16mm and 35mm to the digital format. You've made us feel a spark of importance.”
The first in an ongoing series, additional screenings of animation from the Media Archives are planned for the future, including an installment of the upcoming season of the Pop-Up Cinematheque.
Photos by Amber Fundytus & Jordyn Lemay.