Scottish-Canadian filmmaker John Grierson (1898-1972) used documentaries to build the National Film Board of Canada into one of the world's largest studios.

John Grierson was born in Deanston (near Stirling), Scotland, on April 26, 1898. His ancestors were lighthouse keepers and his father was a school teacher. He was one of eight children in a family that valued curiosity and delighted in argument. Grierson served as a seaman in World War I and completed a brilliant academic career after the war, graduating with distinction in moral philosophy.

On a Rockefeller scholarship to the University of Chicago, Grierson began his lifelong study of the influence of media on public opinion. He worked with editorial writers on several newspapers and went to Hollywood to study film. There he befriended the American filmmaker Robert Flaherty, whose haunting film Nanook of the North celebrated the daily survival of an Inuit hunter. Grierson was one...