title: Independent film

text: Unlike the former, John Waters released most of his films during his early life through his own production company, Dreamland Productions. In the early 1980s, New Line Cinema agreed to work with him on "Polyester" (1981). During the 1980s, Waters would become a pillar of the New York–based independent film movement known as the "Cinema of Transgression", a term coined by Nick Zedd in 1985 to describe a loose-knit group of like-minded New York artists using shock value and humor in their Super 8 mm films and video art. Other key players in this movement included Kembra Pfahler, Casandra Stark, Beth B, Tommy Turner, Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch. Rallying around such institutions as the Film-Makers' Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives, this new generation of independents devoted themselves to the defiance of the now-establishment New Hollywood, proposing that "all film schools be blown up and all boring films never be made again."


title: Independent film

text: In 1978, Sterling Van Wagenen and Charles Gary Allison, with Chairperson Robert Redford, (veteran of New Hollywood and star of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid") founded the Utah/US Film Festival in an effort to attract more filmmakers to Utah and showcase what the potential of independent film could be. At the time, the main focus of the event was to present a series of retrospective films and filmmaker panel discussions; however it also included a small program of new independent films. The jury of the 1978 festival was headed by Gary Allison, and included Verna Fields, Linwood Gale Dunn, Katherine Ross, Charles E. Sellier Jr., Mark Rydell, and Anthea Sylbert. In 1981, the same year that United Artists, bought out by MGM after the financial failure of Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" (1980), ceased to exist as a venue for independent filmmakers, Sterling Van Wagenen left the film festival to help found the Sundance Institute with Robert Redford. In 1985, the now well-established Sundance Institute, headed by Sterling Van Wagenen, took over management of the US Film Festival, which was experiencing financial difficulties. Gary Beer and Sterling Van Wagenen spearheaded production of the inaugural Sundance Film Festival which included Program Director Tony Safford and Administrative Director Jenny Walz Selby.


title: Independent film

text: In 1991, the festival was officially renamed the "Sundance Film Festival", after Redford's famous role as The Sundance Kid. Through this festival the Independent Cinema movement was launched. Such notable figures as Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, James Wan, Hal Hartley, Joel and Ethan Coen and Jim Jarmusch garnered resounding critical acclaim and unprecedented box office sales. In 2005, about 15% of the U.S. domestic box office revenue was from independent studios.


title: Independent film

text: The 1990s saw the rise and success of independent films not only through the film festival circuit but at the box office as well while established actors, such as Bruce Willis, John Travolta, and Tim Robbins, found success themselves both in independent films and Hollywood studio films. "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" in 1990 from New Line Cinema grossed over $100 million in the United States making it the most successful indie film in box-office history to that point. Miramax Films had a string of hits with "Sex, Lies, and Videotape", "My Left Foot", and "Clerks", putting Miramax and New Line Cinema in the sights of big companies looking to cash in on the success of independent studios. In 1993, Disney bought Miramax for $60 million. Turner Broadcasting, in a billion-dollar deal, acquired New Line Cinema, Fine Line Features, and Castle Rock Entertainment in 1994. The acquisitions proved to be a good move for Turner Broadcasting as New Line released "The Mask" and "Dumb & Dumber", Castle Rock released "The Shawshank Redemption", and Miramax released "Pulp Fiction", all in 1994.


title: Independent film

text: The acquisitions of the smaller studios by conglomerate Hollywood was a plan in part to take over the independent film industry and at the same time start "independent" studios of their own. The following are all "indie" studios owned by conglomerate Hollywood:


title: Independent film

text: By the early 2000s, Hollywood was producing three different classes of films: 1) big-budget blockbusters, 2) art films, specialty films and niche-market films produced by the conglomerate-owned "indies" and 3) genre and specialty films coming from true indie studios and producers. The third category comprised over half the features released in the United States and usually cost between $5 and $10 million to produce.


title: Independent film

text: Hollywood was producing these three different classes of feature films by means of three different types of producers. The superior products were the large, budget blockbusters and high-cost star vehicles marketed by the six major studio producer-distributors. Budgets on the major studios' pictures averaged $100 million, with approximately one-third of it spent on marketing because of the large release campaigns. Another class of Hollywood feature film included art films, specialty films, and other niche-market fare controlled by the conglomerates' indie subsidiaries. Budgets on these indie films averaged $40 million per release in the early 2000s, with $10 million to $15 million spent on marketing (MPA, 2006:12). The final class of film consisted of genre and specialty films whose release campaigns were administered by independent producer-distributors with only a few dozen or possibly a few hundred screens in select urban markets. Films like these usually cost less than $10 million, but frequently less than $5 million, with small marketing budgets that escalate if and when a particular film performs.


title: Independent film

text: The independent film industry exists globally. Many of the most prestigious film festivals are hosted in various cities around the world. The Berlin International Film Festival attracts over 130 countries, making it the largest film festival in the world. Other large events include the Toronto International Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the Panafrican Film and TV Festival of Ouagadougou.


title: Independent film

text: The European Union, specifically through the European Cinema and VOD Initiative (ECVI), has established programs that attempt to adapt the film industry to an increasing digital demand for film on video on demand services, outside of theatrical screenings. With this program, VOD offerings are paired with traditional movie screenings. There is also more of a push from EU National governments to fund all aspects of the arts, including film. The European Commission for Culture has an Audiovisual sector, for example, whose role is most notably to help distribute and promote films and festivals across Europe. Additionally, the Commission organizes policymaking, research, and reporting on "media literacy" and "digital distribution."


title: Independent film

text: As with other media, the availability of new technologies has fueled the democratization of filmmaking and the growth of independent film. In the late forties and fifties, new inexpensive portable cameras made it easier for independent filmmakers to produce content without studio backing. The emergence of camcorders in the eighties broadened the pool of filmmakers experimenting with the newly available technology. More recently, the switch from film to digital cameras, inexpensive non-linear editing and the move to distribution via the internet have led to more people being able to make and exhibit movies of their own, including young people and individuals from marginalized communities. These people may have little to no formal technical or academic training, but instead are autodidactic filmmakers, using online sources to learn the craft. Aspiring filmmakers can range from those simply with access to a smartphone or digital camera, to those who write "spec" scripts (to pitch to studios), actively network, and use crowdsourcing and other financing to get their films professionally produced. Oftentimes, aspiring filmmakers have other day-jobs to support themselves financially while they pitch their scripts and ideas to independent film production companies, talent agents, and wealthy investors. This recent technology-fueled renaissance has helped fuel other supporting industries such as the "prosumer" camera segment and film schools for those who are less autodidactic. Film programs in universities such as NYU in New York and USC in Los Angeles have benefited from this transitional growth.


title: Independent film

text: The economic side of filmmaking is also less of an obstacle than before, because the backing of a major studio is no longer needed to access necessary movie funding. Crowdfunding services like Kickstarter, Pozible, and Tubestart have helped people raise thousands of dollars; enough to fund their own, low-budget productions. As a result of the falling cost of technology to make, edit and digitally distribute films, filmmaking is more widely accessible than ever before.


title: Independent film

text: Full-length films are often showcased at film festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, South by Southwest Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and Palm Springs Film Festival. Award winners from these exhibitions are more likely to get picked up for distribution by major film distributors. Film festivals and screenings like these are just one of the options in which movies can be independently produced/released.


title: Independent film

text: The development of independent film in the 1990s and 21st century has been stimulated by a range of technical innovations, including the development of affordable digital cinematography cameras that can exceed the quality of film and easy-to-use computer editing software. Until digital alternatives became available, the cost of professional film equipment and stock was a major obstacle to independent filmmakers who wanted to make their own films. Successful films such as the "Blair Witch Project" (which grossed over US$248.6 million while only spending US$60,000) have emerged from this new accessibility to filmmaking tools. In 2002, the cost of 35 mm film stock went up 23%, according to "Variety". The advent of consumer camcorders in 1985, and more importantly, the arrival of digital video in the early 1990s, lowered the technology barrier to movie production. The personal computer and non-linear editing system have taken away the use of editing stands such as the KEM, dramatically reducing the costs of post-production, while technologies such as DVD, Blu-ray Disc and online video services have simplified distribution; video streaming services have made it possible to distribute a digital version of a film to an entire country or even the world, without involving shipping or warehousing of physical DVDs or film reels. 3-D technology is available to low-budget, independent filmmakers. By the second decade of the 21st century high-quality cellphone cameras allowed people to make, edit and distribute films on a single inexpensive device.


title: Independent film

text: One of the examples of such a new indie approach to filmmaking is the 1999 Oscar-nominated documentary film "Genghis Blues" that was shot by the Belic brothers on two Hi8 consumer camcorders and won that year's Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for a Documentary. At the time, distribution was still film-based so the movie had to be "filmed out" from interlaced digital video format to film running at traditional 24-frame per second rate, so interlacing artefacts are noticeable at times. In 2004 Panasonic released the DVX100 camcorder, which featured film-like 24-frame per second shooting rate. This gave independent filmmakers the ability to shoot video at a frame rate considered standard for movies at the time and opened the possibility of clean digital frame to film frame conversion. Several acclaimed films were made with this camera, for example "Iraq in Fragments". More recent devices allow "filming" at very high frame rates to facilitate distribution into a number of frame rates without artifacts.


title: Independent film

text: Even though new cinema cameras such as the Arri Alexa, RED Epic, and the many new DSLRs cost thousands of dollars to purchase, independent films are still cheaper than ever, creating footage that looks like 35 mm film without the same high cost. These cameras also perform better than traditional film because of its ability to perform in extremely dark/low light situations relative to film. In 2008 Nikon released the first DSLR camera that could also shoot video, the Nikon D90. With the sensor larger than on a traditional camcorder, these DSLRs allow for a greater control over depth of field, great low-light capabilities, and a large variety of exchangeable lenses, including lenses from old film cameras – things which independent filmmakers have been longing years. With the creation of new, light-weight and accessible cinema cameras, documentaries have also benefitted greatly. It was previously impossible to capture the extreme wild of mother nature because of the lack of maneuverability with film cameras; however, with the creation of DSLRs, documentary filmmakers were able to reach hard-to-get places in order to capture what they couldn't have with film cameras. Cameras have even been attached to animals to allow them to help film never-before-seen scenes.


title: Independent film

text: New technologies have also allowed the development of new cinematic techniques originating in independent films, such as the development of the zoom lens in the early 20th century. The use of the (controversial) hand-held shot made popular in the ground-breaking "The Blair Witch Project" also lead to an entirely new subgenre: the found-footage film.


title: Independent film

text: Independent filmmaking has also benefited from the new editing software. Instead of needing a post-house to do the editing, independent film makers use a personal computer or even just a cellphone with editing software to edit their films. Editing software available include Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, (Color Grading Software) DaVinci Resolve, and many more. There are also many free tutorials and courses available online to teach different post production skills needed to use these programs. These new technologies allow independent film makers to create films that are comparable to high-budget films. Computer-generated imaging (CGI) has also become more accessible, transitioning from a highly specialized process done by post-production companies into a task that can be performed by independent artists.


title: Independent film

text: Francis Ford Coppola, long an advocate of new technologies like non-linear editing and digital cameras, said in 2007 that "cinema is escaping being controlled by the financier, and that's a wonderful thing. You don't have to go hat-in-hand to some film distributor and say, 'Please will you let me make a movie?'"


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: Umberto I (; 14 March 1844 – 29 July 1900) was King of Italy from 9 January 1878 until his assassination on 29 July 1900.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: Umberto's reign saw Italy attempt colonial expansion into the Horn of Africa, successfully gaining Eritrea and Somalia despite being defeated by Abyssinia at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. In 1882, he approved the Triple Alliance with the German Empire and Austria-Hungary.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: He was deeply loathed in leftist circles for his conservatism and support of the Bava Beccaris massacre in Milan. He was especially hated by anarchists, who attempted to assassinate him during the first year of his reign. He was killed by another anarchist, Gaetano Bresci, two years after the Bava Beccaris massacre.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: The son of Victor Emmanuel II and Archduchess Adelaide of Austria, Umberto was born in Turin, which was then capital of The Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, on 14 March 1844, his father's 24th birthday. His education was entrusted to, among others, Massimo Taparelli, Marquess d'Azeglio, and Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. As Crown Prince, Umberto was distrusted by his father, who gave him no training in politics or constitutional government, and he was brought up with no affection or love. Instead, Umberto was taught to be obedient and loyal; had to stand at attention whenever his father entered the room; and when speaking to his father had to get down on his knees to kiss his hand first. The fact that Umberto had to kiss his father's hand before being allowed to speak to him both in public and in private right up to his father's death contributed much to the tension between the two.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: From March 1858, he had a military career in the Royal Sardinian Army, beginning with the rank of captain. Umberto took part in the Italian Wars of Independence: he was present at the battle of Solferino in 1859, and in 1866 commanded the XVI Division at the Villafranca battle that followed the Italian defeat at Custoza.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: Because of the upheaval the Savoys caused to a number of other royal houses (all the Italian ones, and those related closely to them, such as the Bourbons of Spain and France) in 1859–60, only a minority of royal families in the 1860s were willing to establish relations with the newly founded Italian royal family. It proved difficult to find any royal bride for either of the sons of king Victor Emmanuel II (his younger son Amedeo, Umberto's brother, married ultimately a Piedmontese subject, princess Vittoria of Cisterna). Their conflict with the papacy did not help these matters. Not many eligible Catholic royal brides were easily available for young Umberto.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: At first, Umberto was to marry Archduchess Mathilde of Austria, a scion of a remote sideline of the Austrian imperial house; however, she died as the result of an accident at the age of 18. On 21 April 1868, Umberto married his first cousin, Margherita Teresa Giovanna, Princess of Savoy. Their only son was Victor Emmanuel, prince of Naples. While Umberto was to be described by a modern historian as "a colorless and physically unimpressive man, of limited intellect" Margherita's appearance, cultural interests and strong personality were to enhance the popularity of the monarchy. Umberto kept many mistresses on the side, and his favorite mistress, Eugenia, the wife of Duke Litta Visconti-Arese, lived with him at his court as his common-law wife as he forced Queen Margherita to accept her as a lady-in-waiting.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: In 1876, when the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury, visited Rome, he reported to London that King Victor Emmanuel II and Crown Prince Umberto were "at war with each other". Upon taking the Crown, Umberto dismissed all of his father's friends from the court, sold off his father's racing horse collection (which numbered 1,000 horses) and cut down on extravagances to pay down the debts Victor Emmanuel II had run up. The British historian Denis Mack Smith commented that it was sign of the great wealth of the House of Savoy that Umberto was able to pay off his father's debts without having to ask parliament for assistance. Like his father, Umberto was a poorly educated man without intellectual or artistic interests, never read any books, and preferred to dictate rather than write letters as he found writing to be too mentally taxing. After meeting him, Queen Victoria described Umberto as having his father's "gruff, abrupt manner of speaking", but without his "rough speech and manners". In contrast, Queen Margherita was widely read in all the classics of European literature, kept up a salon of intellectuals, and despite the fact that French was her first language was often praised for her beautiful Italian in her letters and when speaking.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: Ascending the throne on the death of his father (9 January 1878), Umberto adopted the title "Umberto I of Italy" rather than "Umberto IV" (of Savoy), and consented that the remains of his father should be interred at Rome in the Pantheon, rather than the royal mausoleum of Basilica of Superga. While on a tour of the kingdom, accompanied by Queen Margherita and the Prime Minister Benedetto Cairoli, he was attacked with a dagger by an anarchist, Giovanni Passannante, during a parade in Naples on 17 November 1878. The King warded off the blow with his sabre, but Cairoli, in attempting to defend him, was severely wounded in the thigh. The would-be assassin was condemned to death, even though the law only allowed the death penalty if the King was killed. The King commuted the sentence to one of penal servitude for life, which was served in a cell only high, without sanitation and with of chains. Passanante would die three decades later in a psychiatric institution.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: In foreign policy Umberto I approved the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and the German Empire, repeatedly visiting Vienna and Berlin. Many in Italy, however, viewed with hostility an alliance with their former Austrian enemies, who were still occupying areas claimed by Italy. A strong militarist, Umberto loved Prussian-German militarism and on his visits to Germany his favorite activity was to review the Prussian Army and he was greatly honored to be allowed to lead a Prussian hussar regiment on field maneuvers outside of Frankfurt. Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany told him during one visit that he should strengthen the "Regio Esercito" to the point that he could abolish parliament and rule Italy as a dictator.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: A major criticism of the policies carried out by the Prime Ministers appointed by Umberto was the continued power of organized crime in the "Mezzogiorno" (southern Italy) with the Mafia dominating Sicily and the Camorra dominating Campania. Both the Mafia and the Camorra functioned as "parallel states" whose existence and power was tolerated by successive governments in Rome as both the Mafia and the Camorra engaged in electoral fraud and voter intimidation so effective that it was Mafia and Camorra bosses who decided who won elections. As it was impossible to win elections in the "Mezzogiorno" without the support of organized crime, politicians cut deals with the bosses of the Camorra and Mafia to exchange toleration of their criminal activities for votes. The "Mezzogiorno" was the most backward region of Italy with high levels of poverty, emigration and an illiteracy rate estimated as high as 70%. The deputies from the "Mezzogiorno" always voted against more schools for the "Mezzogiorno", thus perpetuating southern backwardness and poverty as both the Mafia and the Camorra were opposed to any sort of social reform that might threaten their power. However, the king preferred heavy military spending rather than engaging in social reforms and every year, the Italian state spent 10 times more money on the military than on education. Umberto, an aggressive proponent of militarism, once said that to accept cuts in the military budget would be "an abject scandal and we might as well give up politics altogether". At least part of the reason why Umberto was so opposed to cutting the military budget was because he personally promised Emperor Wilhelm II that Italy would send 5 army corps to Germany in the event of a war with France, a promise that the king did not see fit to share with his prime ministers.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: Umberto was also favorably disposed towards the policy of colonial expansion inaugurated in 1885 by the occupation of Massawa in Eritrea. Italy expanded into Somalia in the 1880s as well. Umberto's preferred solution to the problems of Italy was to conquer Ethiopia, regardless of overwhelming public opposition, and supported the ultra-imperialist Prime Minister Francesco Crispi who in May 1895 spoke of "the absolute impossibility of continuing to govern through Parliament." In December 1893, Umberto appointed Crispi prime minister despite his "shattered reputation" due to his involvement in the Banca Romana scandal together with numerous other scandals that the king himself called "sordid". As Crispi was heavily in debt, the king secretly agreed to pay off his debts in exchange for Crispi following the king's advice.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: Umberto openly called Parliament a "bad joke" and refused to allow Parliament to meet again lest Crispi faced difficult questions about the Banca Romana scandal. Crispi only avoided indictment because of his parliamentary immunity. When the king was warned that it was dangerous for the crown to support someone like Crispi, Umberto replied that "Crispi is a pig, but a necessary pig", who despite his corruption, had to stay in power for "the national interest, which is the only thing that matters". With the support of the king, Crispi governed in an authoritarian manner, preferring to pass legislation by having the king issue royal decrees as opposed to getting bills passed by Parliament. On 25 June 1895 Crispi refused to allow a parliamentary inquiry into the bank scandal, saying as a prime minister he was above the law because he had "served Italy for 53 years". Umberto I was suspected of aspiring to a vast empire in north-east Africa, a suspicion which tended somewhat to diminish his popularity after the disastrous Battle of Adwa in Ethiopia on 1 March 1896. After the Battle of Adwa, public frustration with the deeply unpopular war with Ethiopia came to the fore, and demonstrations broke out in Rome with people shouting "death to the king!" and "long live the republic!".


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: Despite the defeat at Adwa, Umberto still harbored imperialistic ambitions towards Ethiopia, saying: "I am what they call a warmonger and my personal wish would be to strike back at Menelik and avenge our defeat." In 1897, the prime minister, Antonio Starabba, Marchese di Rudinì tried to sell Eritrea to Belgium on the grounds that Eritrea was too expensive to hold onto, but was overruled by the king who insisted that Eritrea must stay Italian. Rudinì attempted to reduce military spending, citing a study showing that since 1861 military spending constituted over half the budget every year, but was again blocked by the king. In 1899, Foreign Minister Felice Napoleone Canevaro dispatched a "Regia Marina" squadron to China with an ultimatum demanding that the Chinese government hand over a coastal city to be ruled as an Italian concession in the same manner as other Western imperial powers in China. Prime Minister Luigi Pelloux and his fellow cabinet ministers stated that Canevaro had acted without informing them, and it was widely believed that the king was the one who given Canevaro the orders to acquire a concession in China. After the Chinese government refused, Canevaro threatened war, but was forced to back down and settled for breaking diplomatic relations with China.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: In the summer of 1900, Italian forces were part of the Eight-Nation Alliance which participated in the Boxer Rebellion in Imperial China. Through the Boxer Protocol, signed after Umberto's death, the Kingdom of Italy gained a concession territory in Tientsin.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: Umberto's attitude towards the Holy See was uncompromising. In an 1886 telegram, he declared Rome "untouchable" and affirmed the permanence of the Italian possession of the "Eternal City".


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: The reign of Umberto I was a time of social upheaval, though it was later claimed to have been a tranquil "belle époque". Social tensions mounted as a consequence of the relatively recent occupation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the spread of socialist ideas, public hostility to the colonialist plans of the various governments, especially Crispi's, and the numerous crackdowns on civil liberties. The protesters included the young Benito Mussolini, then a member of the socialist party. On 22 April 1897, Umberto I was attacked again, by an unemployed ironsmith, Pietro Acciarito, who tried to stab him near Rome.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: During the colonial wars in Africa, large demonstrations over the rising price of bread were held in Italy and on 7 May 1898, the city of Milan was put under military rule by General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris, who ordered rifle-fire and artillery against the demonstrators. As a result, 82 people were killed according to the authorities, with opposition sources claiming that the death toll was 400 dead with 2,000 wounded. King Umberto sent a telegram to congratulate Bava Beccaris on the restoration of order and later decorated him with the medal of Great Official of Savoy Military Order, greatly outraging a large part of the public opinion.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: On the evening of 29 July 1900, Umberto was assassinated in Monza. The king was shot four times by the Italian-American anarchist Gaetano Bresci. Bresci claimed he wanted to avenge the people killed in Milan during the suppression of the riots of May 1898.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: Umberto was buried in the Pantheon in Rome, by the side of his father Victor Emmanuel II, on 9 August 1900. He was the last Savoy to be buried there, as his son and successor Victor Emmanuel III died in exile and was buried in Egypt until his remains were transferred to Vicoforte near Cuneo in 2017.


title: Umberto I of Italy

text: American anarchist Leon F. Czolgosz claimed that the assassination of Umberto I was his inspiration to kill President William McKinley in September 1901.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: Life Is Strange is an episodic graphic adventure video game developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Square Enix's European subsidiary. The first installment of the "Life Is Strange" series, the game was released in five episodes periodically throughout 2015 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One. It was ported to OS X and Linux in 2016 and iOS and Android in 2017–2018. A remastered version of the game was released as part of the "Life Is Strange Remastered Collection" in February 2022.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: The plot focuses on Max Caulfield, an 18-year-old photography student who discovers that she has the ability to rewind time at any moment, leading her every choice to enact the butterfly effect. The player's actions will adjust the narrative as it unfolds, and reshape it once allowed to travel back in time. Fetch quests and making environmental changes represent the forms of puzzle solving in addition to using branching choices for conversation.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: Development of the game began in April 2013. It was formed with an episodic format in mind, for reasons both financial and creative. The developers conducted field research on the setting by traveling to the Pacific Northwest, and subverted known archetypes to make the characters. Player feedback influenced the adjustments made to the episodes. Story and character arc serve as the central point in the game.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: "Life Is Strange" received generally favorable reviews commending the character development, rewind game mechanic, and tackling of taboo subjects. Criticisms included the slang that was used, poor lip-syncing, and tonal inconsistencies in the story. It was purchased by 3 million unique players in May 2017. A prequel, "", was released in August 2017, and a sequel, "Life Is Strange 2", in September 2018. An additional installment to the series, "", was released in September 2021.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: "Life Is Strange" is a graphic adventure played from a third-person view. The player takes control of Max Caulfield, whose time rewinding ability allows the player to redo almost any action that has been taken. The player can examine and interact with objects, which enables puzzle solving in the form of fetch quests and making changes to the environment. Items that are collected before time travelling will be kept in the inventory after the fact.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: The player can explore various locations in the fictional setting of Arcadia Bay and communicate with non-playable characters. Dialogue exchanges can be rewound while branching options are used for conversation. Once an event is reset, the details provided earlier are permitted to avail themselves in the future. In some instances, choices in dialogue will alter and affect the story through short or long-term consequences. For each one of the choices, something good in the short term could turn out worse later.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: In October 2013, 18-year-old Maxine "Max" Caulfield (Hannah Telle) returns to Arcadia Bay, Oregon to attend Blackwell Academy. During her class with photography teacher Mark Jefferson (Derek Phillips), Max experiences a catastrophic vision of a tornado destroying a lighthouse and approaching the town. Leaving for the restroom to regain her composure, she witnesses classmate Nathan Prescott (Nik Shriner) shoot and kill a girl in a fit of rage. In a sudden effort, she develops the ability to rewind time and saves the girl, revealed to be her childhood friend Chloe Price (Ashly Burch). The two reunite and visit the lighthouse, where Max reveals to Chloe her powers. Strange weather and other anomalies begin to occur throughout Arcadia Bay.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: The next day, Max's class is halted when Kate Marsh (Dayeanne Hutton), a fellow student who is being bullied for a viral video depicting her kissing several students at a party, commits suicide by jumping off the roof of the girls' dorm. Max manages to rewind time and reaches the roof, giving her the opportunity to talk Kate down. She ultimately resolves to uncover what happened to Kate and Chloe's missing friend Rachel Amber. Max and Chloe break into the principal's office that night, discovering multiple clues pointing to Nathan. The next morning, they sneak into the motorhome of drug dealer Frank Bowers (Daniel Bonjour), and learn that Rachel was in a relationship with Frank but kept it from Chloe. Max later examines a childhood photo of her and Chloe, but is suddenly transported to the day the picture was taken. She prevents Chloe's father William (Joe Ochman) from dying in a traffic collision, which inadvertently creates an alternative reality where William is alive but Chloe has been paralysed from the neck down as a result of her own accident. Heartbroken, Max uses the photo to undo her actions and return to the present day.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: Continuing their investigation, Max and Chloe discover a bunker under a derelict barn owned by the Prescotts, where they find pictures of Kate and Rachel tied up and intoxicated. At a scrapyard, they discover Rachel's remains, much to Chloe's despair. The two head to a school party to confront Nathan, but instead receive a text from him threatening to destroy the evidence. They hurry back to the scrapyard but are ambushed by Jefferson, who anaesthetises Max and kills Chloe with a gunshot to the head. Max wakes up in the bunker, where Jefferson has been drugging and photographing young girls to capture their innocence. Jefferson reveals that he took Nathan under his wing but killed him before abducting Max, and that Nathan gave Rachel an overdose when he tried to mimic Jefferson's work. Jefferson intends to murder Max after he has the photos he wants. Max escapes into a photograph and emerges back at the beginning in Jefferson's class. She alerts David Madsen (Don McManus), Chloe's stepfather and Blackwell head of security, saving herself and Chloe and leading to the arrest of Jefferson and Nathan.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: Max is given the opportunity to go to San Francisco and have one of her photos displayed in an art gallery. She calls Chloe from the event, realising that, for all her effort, the storm has reached Arcadia Bay. Max travels back to the time at which she took the gallery photo, which eventually leads her to sojourn alternative realities as they devolve into a dreamscape nightmare. She reunites with Chloe at the lighthouse, where they confront the possibility that Max brought the storm into existence by saving Chloe from being shot by Nathan earlier in the week. Max must make a choice: rewind time and sacrifice Chloe's life to save Arcadia Bay, or stay in the timeline and spare Chloe but sacrifice Arcadia Bay. If Max chooses the former, she tearfully allows Chloe to be shot. Nathan and Jefferson are arrested, the storm never appears, and Chloe's death is mourned. If Max chooses the latter, the storm hits Arcadia Bay before ceasing. The pair then depart from the now devastated town.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: Development of "Life Is Strange" began in April 2013 with a team of 15, and more people were added when the collaboration with Square Enix began. The episodes were originally aimed to release about 6 weeks apart. Dontnod co-founder Jean-Maxime Moris was originally the game's Creative Director. Dontnod told them about "Life Is Strange" only after they had turned down a pitch for a larger game. Before signing with Square Enix, "Life Is Strange" was imagined as a full-length video game that Dontnod would self-publish. However, the publisher surmised that it would be more successful as an episodic title. The game was originally codenamed "What If" but the name was not used because of the film with the same name.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: A developer diary was published before release that said most prospective publishers were unwilling to publish a game unless it had a male protagonist. They said most publishers had the same objection to Dontnod's first project, "Remember Me," which also had a female protagonist. Dontnod CEO Oskar Guilbert also challenged the idea at the start. The developers said Square Enix was the only publisher with no intention to change this.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: "Life Is Strange" was born from the rewind mechanic idea, which the developer had already experimented on with their last game "Remember Me". The lead character Max was created with the ability to rewind time to supplement this mechanism. The episodic format was decided upon by the studio for creative reasons, financial restrictions and marketing purposes, allowing them to tell the story in its preferred slow pace. The Pacific Northwest was picked as the setting for the purpose of conveying a nostalgic and autumnal feel. The development team visited the region, took photographs, looked at local newspapers and used Google Street View to make sure the environment was accurately portrayed. It was decided early on that most of the budget be spent on the writing and voice actors. The original story was written in French by Jean-Luc Cano, and converted into a game script by the co-directors and design team. It was subsequently handed over to Christian Divine and Cano to be fine tuned in English. Story and character development were highlighted over point-and-click puzzles, making choice and consequence integral to how the narrative unfolds. Hannah Telle auditioned for Max Caulfield in July 2014 and was offered the part; Ashly Burch auditioned for both Max and her given role Chloe Price. The recording sessions were done in Los Angeles, California, with the French developer brought in via Skype.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: The game has been compared to "Remember Me", which holds significant differences but addresses similar themes of memory and identity. "Life Is Strange" was specified as an analogue look at human identity in contrast to "Remember Me", the digital view of the same theme. Running on an improved version of Unreal Engine 3, it makes use of the tools and special effects like lighting and depth of field engineered for "Remember Me" as well as subsequent advances. Visual effects like post-processes, double exposure and overlapping screen space particles were used as an artistic approach to be displayed while the lead character rewinds time. The textures seen in the game were entirely hand painted, adapted to achieve what art director Michel Koch called "impressionistic rendering". Elements were adjusted based on player feedback, with influences like "The Walking Dead", "Gone Home" and "Heavy Rain" in mind. Additional sources of inspiration include the visual novel "Danganronpa", in terms of balancing gameplay and story, and the novel "The Catcher in the Rye", whose protagonist Holden Caulfield shares a surname with Max, the game's lead. The characters were created using known archetypes, at first to establish an entry point for the player, and then to subvert them. For the sake of serving the realism, the supernatural elements were designed as a metaphor for the characters' inner conflict, and experts were consulted to tackle the subject of teen suicide. The score was composed by Jonathan Morali of the band Syd Matters. Inspired by modern indie folk music, the soundtrack was intended to inform the mood. The music contains a blend of licensed tracks and composed pieces. Featured artists include José González, Mogwai, Breton, Amanda Palmer, Brian Viglione, Bright Eyes, Message to Bears, Local Natives, Syd Matters, Sparklehorse, Angus & Julia Stone, alt-J, Mud Flow and Foals.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: Square Enix announced "Life Is Strange" at Gamescom on 11 August 2014. The episodes were released digitally on PC via Steam, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 via PlayStation Network, and Xbox 360 and Xbox One via Xbox Live between 30 January 2015 and 20 October 2015. Two season pass options were available for reduced prices, one with episode 1-5 and one with episode 2-5. A demo of the first 20 minutes was released simultaneously with episode 1 for consoles and later for PC. In November 2014, the publisher said they were interested in releasing physical copies of the game, but said that at that time they were "100 per cent focused on the digital release". One year later, the retail edition was set to be released for the PC, PS4 and Xbox One in North America on 19 January 2016 and in Europe on 22 January 2016; the limited edition had an artbook, the soundtrack, score, and a director's commentary. The director's commentary was also released as a free DLC. A Japanese dubbed version was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 on 3 March 2016. Feral Interactive ported "Life Is Strange" for OS X, released on 16 June 2016, and Linux, released on 21 July 2016. That same day, the first episode was made indefinitely available for free on Linux, Windows, OS X, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. "Life Is Strange" was included on PlayStation Plus (for America and PAL regions) the month of June 2017. It was released for iOS between 14 December 2017 and 29 March 2018, and launched on Android on 18 July 2018, both ported by Black Wing Foundation.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: "Life Is Strange" received "generally favorable reviews" according to Metacritic. While some reviewers criticised the games's lip-syncing and use of dated slang, they lauded the character development and time travel component, suggesting that there should be more games like it. "Eurogamer" said it was "one of the best interactive story games of this generation" and "Hardcore Gamer" said it was the sleeper hit of 2015. Legendary Entertainment stated it received over 75 Game of the Year awards and listings. In April 2017, "Xbox One UK" ranked it first in its list of Xbox One games priced under £20. Game director Yoko Taro listed it as one of his favourite PlayStation 4 games.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: Kevin VanOrd of "GameSpot" said "Episode 1: Chrysalis" is "an involving slice of life that works because its situations eloquently capture a peculiar early-college state of mind", while "Game Informer"s Kimberley Wallace said the game's tackling of "subjects that are usually taboo for video games" was impressive. "Destructoid"s Brett Makedonski said the episode's strongest characteristic was exploration—both "self- and worldly". Mitch Dyer of "IGN" said the story was ultimately obstructed by its "laughable" script and "worse performances". In response to "Episode 2: Out of Time", "Polygon"s Megan Farokhmanesh also said that the emphasis on self-exploration had considerable impact on the enjoyment of the game. Other critics said the ending was an "emotional high point" and that it brought meaning to the choices from both the first and second episodes. Mike Williams said in "USgamer" that the pacing of "Episode 2: Out of Time" was "slower and less exciting" than that of episode one. PopMatters' Eric Swain described the episode as generally sincere but containing moments that strained credibility.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: Adnan Riaz of "Hardcore Gamer" said "Episode 3: Chaos Theory" was a dramatic improvement that presented a "thrilling, poignant, fascinating and ... enticing" narrative whose outcome from past decisions also added a sense of realism. Peter Paras of "Game Revolution" complimented the character beats, particularly the development of Chloe Price, who he said "really comes into her own as [a] fully-formed character". Though "GameSpot"s Alexa Ray Corriea said that the fetch quests interfered with its emotional quality, the episode built up to a "killer cliffhanger" according to Farokhmanesh. "GameZone"s Matt Liebl said "Episode 4: Dark Room" was "easily the most emotional episode" and that the mystery of Rachel Amber had done a "tremendous job in keeping us hooked". Tom Hoggins of "The Telegraph" said the developer's venture into subjects like social division, online bullying, parental conflict and suicide were "bold". Critics said there were tonal problems, caused by the game's "cheap ways" of progressing the plot, such as character inconsistency and superfluous shock value. Critics were more favourable towards the episode's puzzles and relationships. They said the final episode, "Polarized", had a "fitting conclusion" to the coming of age story of Max Caulfield and the relationship between the two leads was carried out successfully. One stealth sequence was described as "tedious" and "out-of-place" while other aspects inhabiting the same course of events were favoured. Reviewers were divided on the ending.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: The first episode was ranked fifth among the best selling PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 video games of February 2015. "Life Is Strange" reached one million sales in July 2015, having accumulated over 1.2 million unique players worldwide; the attach rate to units between the complete season and season pass proved to be "extremely strong", divulged Square Enix. The retail edition made seventh place in the top ten UK game sales chart for the week ending 23 January 2016. "Life Is Strange" was one of the top 100 best-selling games on Steam in 2016. As of May 2017, it was purchased by 3 million unique players in May 2017.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: After "Life Is Strange" achieved financial and commercial success, Dontnod Entertainment started to become more prominent in the video game industry; publishers pursued the studio for the first time, whereas they previously had to pursue publishers themselves. CEO Oskar Guilbert said that the game saved his company financially after the mediocre sales of "Remember Me". The Washington Post noted it as passing the Steven Spielberg test for video game as an art form in their review. Fans speculated and made theories about the plot, as well as predicting part of a possible ending.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: In 2016, Square Enix sponsored its own "Everyday Heroes" photography contest, inspired by the game, offering a scholarship for the winning entry. Square Enix also coordinated with Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER) to support an anti-bullying initiative based on themes within the game and donated a total amount of $25,000.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: In July 2016, Legendary Digital Studios and Square Enix announced that they would be adapting "Life Is Strange" as a digital series. At the time of the announcement, they were meeting with potential writers for the series adaptation, which would be set in Arcadia Bay. In 2017, dj2 Entertainment sold the rights to the series to streaming service Hulu. "", a prequel developed by Deck Nine, launched on 31 August 2017. A free spin-off called "The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit" was announced and released in June 2018. "Life Is Strange 2" was released on 27 September 2018, featuring a new location and cast of characters.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: A comic book series of the same name, set after the "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay" ending of the game, was released by Titan Comics beginning November 2018. The comic is written by Emma Vieceli, with interior and cover art by Claudia Leonardi and colours by Andrea Izzo. Square Enix also partnered with Titan Comics to produce "Life Is Strange: Welcome to Blackwell Academy", a tie-in book about Blackwell Academy and the town of Arcadia Bay, written by Matt Forbeck.


title: Life Is Strange (video game)

text: Remastered versions of "Life Is Strange" and "Before the Storm" were released on 1 February 2022, as part of Life Is Strange Remastered Collection on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Google Stadia and at a later date on Nintendo Switch. The remaster includes previously released content with updated visuals and gameplay puzzles, improved character animation, engine and lighting upgrades, and full facial motion capture.


title: Asha Parekh

text: Asha Parekh (born 2 October 1942) is a retired Indian actress, film director, and producer who appeared in many commercially successful films throughout her career. She was the highest paid actress of her time and was one of the most successful actresses of the 1960s and 1970s. She is considered one of the most influential actresses of all time in Hindi cinema. In 1992, she was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India for her contribution to the field of cinema and also honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2020.


title: Asha Parekh

text: Asha Parekh is a Gujarati born on 2 October 1942. Her mother, Sudha aka Salma Parekh, was a Dawoodi Bohra Shia Gujarati Muslim and her father, Bachubhai Parekh, was Hindu Gujarati. Her mother enrolled her in Indian classical dance classes at an early age and she learned from many teachers, including Pandit Bansilal Bharati.


title: Asha Parekh

text: Parekh started her career as a child artist under the screen name Baby Asha Parekh. Famed film director Bimal Roy saw her dance at a stage function and cast her at the age of ten in "Maa" (1952) and then repeated her in "Baap Beti" (1954). The latter film's failure disappointed her, and even though she did a few more child roles, she quit to resume her schooling. At sixteen she decided to try acting again, and to make her debut as a heroine, but she was rejected from Vijay Bhatt's "Goonj Uthi Shehnai" (1959) in favour of actress Ameeta, because the filmmaker claimed she was not star material. Precisely eight days later, film producer Subodh Mukherjee and writer-director Nasir Hussain cast her as the heroine in "Dil Deke Dekho" (1959), opposite Shammi Kapoor, which made her a huge star.


title: Asha Parekh

text: It also started a long association with Hussain who cast her as his heroine in six more films: "Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai" (1961), "Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon" (1963), "Teesri Manzil" (1966), "Baharon Ke Sapne" (1967), "Pyar Ka Mausam" (1969), and "Caravan" (1971). She also did a cameo in Nasir Hussain's film "Manzil Manzil" (1984) with whom she had earlier done 6 films. Hussain also got her involved in distribution of 21 films, starting with "Baharon Ke Sapne" (1967). Parekh was primarily known as a glamour girl/excellent dancer/tomboy in most of her films, until director Raj Khosla gave her a serious image by casting her in tragedienne roles in three of her favourite films; "Do Badan" (1966), "Chirag" (1969) and "Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki" (1978). Director Shakti Samanta gave her more dramatic roles in her other favourite films, "Pagla Kahin Ka" (1970) and "Kati Patang" (1970); the latter earned her the Filmfare Award for Best Actress.


title: Asha Parekh

text: Many important directors repeatedly cast her in several of their films, including Vijay Anand and Mohan Segal. Parekh acted in her mother tongue by starring in three Gujarati films at the height of her fame in Hindi films, the first being "Akhand Saubhagyavati" (1963), which became a huge hit. She also acted in some Punjabi films, such as "Kankan De Ohle" (1971) opposite Dharmendra and "Lambhardarni" (1976) with Dara Singh, as well as the hit Kannada film "Sharavegada Saradara" (1989). As a leading heroine, she formed popular onscreen pairings with actors including Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor and Rajesh Khanna.


title: Asha Parekh

text: After her days as a leading lady ended, Parekh took on supporting roles as bhabhi (sister-in-law) and mother. A notable film she did in which she played such a part is "Kaalia" (1981), which is the only film in which she shared screen space with Amitabh Bachchan. But she called these roles the "awkward phase" of her career. So she stopped acting in films, and her friends recommended that she become a television director. She took their advice and became a television director in the early 1990s with the Gujarati serial "Jyoti". She formed a production company, "Akruti", and produced serials like "Palash ke Phool", "Baaje Payal", "Kora Kagaz" and a comedy, "Dal Mein Kaala". She was the president of the Cine Artistes' Association from 1994 to 2000. Parekh was the first female chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification (Censor Board) of India. She held the post from 1998 to 2001 for which she received no salary, but plenty of controversy for censoring films and for not giving clearance to Shekhar Kapur's "Elizabeth". Later, she became the treasurer of the Cine and Television Artists Association (CINTAA) and was later elected as one of its office-bearers.


title: Asha Parekh

text: Asha stopped acting in 1995 to pursue directing and producing television serials. Parekh received the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002. She has continued to receive other Lifetime Achievement Awards: the Kalakar Award in 2004; the International Indian Film Academy Awards in 2006; the Pune International Film Festival Award in 2007; and the Ninth Annual Bollywood Award in Long Island, New York in 2007. She received the Living Legend Award from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI).


title: Asha Parekh

text: In 2008, she was a judge on the reality show "Tyohaar Dhamaaka" on the Indian entertainment channel 9X. In 2017, her autobiography (co-written by Khalid Mohamed) titled "The Hit Girl" was released.


title: Asha Parekh

text: Parekh has remained unmarried, claiming that her reputation of being unapproachable made people hesitate in asking for her hand in marriage. In her memoir "The Hit Girl", she confirmed rumours that she was romantically involved with director Nasir Hussain who was already married, but out of respect for both their families, she couldn't marry him. Previously, Parekh would only state that she had a longtime boyfriend but declined to elaborate on the relationship, only stating that "it was nice while it lasted." She said she had not seen Nasir Hussain during the last year of his life, as he became reclusive because of his wife's death, but she did speak to him the day before he died in 2002. She almost married an Indian professor living in America, but he didn't want to give up his girlfriend, so she called off their wedding plans. She had also tried to adopt a child, but he had birth defects, and the doctors refused to let her adopt him.


title: Asha Parekh

text: Today, Parekh concentrates on her dance academy Kara Bhavan and the Asha Parekh Hospital in Santacruz, Mumbai, named in her honour because of her many humanitarian contributions.


title: Asha Parekh

text: Parekh has opened a hospital for those in need, called "Bcj Hospital And Asha Parekh Research Centre." She has stated that the hospital had been closed and reopened various times.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: William Lyon Mackenzie King (December 17, 1874 – July 22, 1950) was a Canadian statesman and politician who served as the tenth prime minister of Canada for three non-consecutive terms from 1921 to 1926, 1926 to 1930, and 1935 to 1948. A Liberal, he was the dominant politician in Canada from the early 1920s to the late 1940s. King is best known for his leadership of Canada throughout the Great Depression and the Second World War. He played a major role in laying the foundations of the Canadian welfare state and established Canada's international reputation as a middle power fully committed to world order. With a total of 21 years and 154 days in office, he remains the longest-serving prime minister in Canadian history.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Born in Berlin, Ontario (now Kitchener), King studied law and political economy in the 1890s and became concerned with issues of social welfare. He later obtained a PhD – the only Canadian prime minister to have done so. In 1900, he became deputy minister of the Canadian government's new Department of Labour. He entered the House of Commons in 1908 before becoming the federal minister of labour in 1909, serving under Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. After losing his seat in the 1911 federal election, King worked for the Rockefeller Foundation before briefly working as an industrial consultant. Following the death of Laurier in 1919, King acceded to the leadership of the Liberal Party and won a by-election to re-enter the Commons shortly after. Taking the helm of a party bitterly torn apart during the First World War due to the Conscription Crisis of 1917, he unified both the pro-conscription and anti-conscription factions of the party, leading it to victory in the 1921 federal election.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King established a post-war agenda that lowered wartime taxes, moderately reduced tariffs, and developed the national capital, Ottawa. He strengthened Canadian autonomy by refusing to support Britain in the Chanak Crisis without Parliament's consent and negotiating the Halibut Treaty (which managed depleting halibut stocks) with the United States without British interference. In the 1925 election, the Conservatives won a plurality of seats, but the Liberals negotiated support from the agrarian Progressive Party and stayed in office as a minority government. In 1926, facing a Commons vote that could force his government to resign, King asked Governor General Lord Byng to dissolve parliament and call an election. Byng refused and instead invited the Conservatives to form government, who briefly held office but lost a motion of no confidence. This sequence of events triggered a major constitutional crisis, the King–Byng affair. King and the Liberals decisively won the resulting election. After, King sought to make Canada's foreign policy more independent by expanding the Department of External Affairs while recruiting more Canadian diplomats. His government also introduced old-age pensions based on need and removed taxes on cables, telegrams, and railway and steamship tickets. King's slow reaction to the Great Depression led to a defeat at the polls in 1930 at the hands of the Conservatives.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: The Conservative government's response to the depression was heavily unpopular, and thus, King returned to power in a landslide victory in the 1935 election. Soon after, the economy was on an upswing. King negotiated the 1935 Reciprocal Trade Agreement with the United States, passed the 1938 "National Housing Act" to improve housing affordability, introduced unemployment insurance in 1940, and in 1944, introduced family allowances – Canada's first universal welfare program. The government also established Trans-Canada Air Lines (the precursor to Air Canada) and the National Film Board. Days after the Second World War broke out, Canadian troops were deployed. The Liberals' overwhelming triumph in the 1940 election allowed King to continue leading Canada through the war. He mobilized Canadian money, supplies, and volunteers to support Britain while boosting the economy and maintaining morale on the home front. To satisfy French Canadians, King delayed introducing overseas conscription until late 1944. Even when the policy was introduced, he prevented an uprising in Quebec with the assistance of his cabinet ministers Ernest Lapointe and Louis St. Laurent. The Allies' victory in 1945 allowed King to call a post-war election, in which the Liberals lost their majority government. In his final years in office, King and his government partnered Canada with other Western nations to take part in the deepening Cold War, introduced Canadian citizenship, and successfully negotiated Newfoundland's entry into Confederation. A modernizing technocrat, he wanted his Liberal Party to represent liberal corporatism to create social harmony.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: After leading his party for 29 years, and leading the country for years, King retired from politics in late 1948. He died of pneumonia in mid-1950. King's personality was complex; biographers agree on the personal characteristics that made him distinctive. He lacked the charisma of such contemporaries as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, or Charles de Gaulle. Cold and tactless in human relations, he lacked oratorical skill and his personality did not resonate with the electorate. He had many political allies but very few close personal friends. He kept secret his beliefs in spiritualism and use of mediums to stay in contact with departed associates and particularly with his mother, and allowed his intense spirituality to distort his understanding of Adolf Hitler throughout the late 1930s. Historian Jack Granatstein notes, "the scholars expressed little admiration for King the man but offered unbounded admiration for his political skills and attention to Canadian unity." King is ranked among the top three of Canadian prime ministers.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King was born in Berlin, Ontario (now known as Kitchener), to John King and Isabel Grace Mackenzie. His maternal grandfather was William Lyon Mackenzie, first mayor of Toronto and leader of the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837. His father was a lawyer and later a lecturer at Osgoode Hall Law School. King had three siblings.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King's father was a lawyer with a struggling practice in a small city, and never enjoyed financial security. His parents lived a life of shabby gentility, employing servants and tutors they could scarcely afford, although their financial situation improved somewhat following a move to Toronto around 1890, where King lived with them for several years in a duplex located on Beverley Street while studying at the University of Toronto.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King became a lifelong practising Presbyterian with a dedication to social reform based on his Christian duty. He never favoured socialism.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King enrolled at the University of Toronto in 1891. He obtained a BA degree in 1895, an LLB degree in 1896, and an MA in 1897, all from the university. While studying in Toronto he met a wide circle of friends, many of whom became prominent. He was an early member and officer of the Kappa Alpha Society, which included a number of these individuals (two future Ontario Supreme Court Justices and the future chairman of the university itself). It encouraged debate on political ideas. He also met Arthur Meighen, a future political rival; the two men did not get on especially well from the start.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King was especially concerned with issues of social welfare and was influenced by the settlement house movement pioneered by Toynbee Hall in London, England. He played a central role in fomenting a students' strike at the university in 1895. He was in close touch, behind the scenes, with Vice-Chancellor William Mulock, for whom the strike provided a chance to embarrass his rivals Chancellor Edward Blake and President James Loudon. King failed to gain his immediate objective, a teaching position at the university but earned political credit with Mulock, the man who would invite him to Ottawa and make him a deputy minister only five years later. While studying at the University of Toronto, King also contributed to the campus newspaper, "The Varsity". King subsequently wrote for "The Globe", "The Mail and Empire", and the "Toronto News". Fellow journalist W. A. Hewitt recalled that, the city editor of the "Toronto News" left him in charge one afternoon with instructions to fire King if he showed up. When Hewitt sat at the editor's desk, King showed up a few minutes later and resigned before Hewitt could tell him he was fired.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: After studying at the University of Chicago and working with Jane Addams at her settlement house, Hull House, King proceeded to Harvard University. He earned an MA in political economy from Harvard in 1898. In 1909, Harvard granted him a PhD degree for a dissertation titled "Publicity and Public Opinion as Factors in the Solution of Industrial Problems in Canada." He is the only Canadian Prime Minister to have earned a PhD.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In 1900, King became editor of the federal government-owned "Labour Gazette", a publication that explored complex labour issues. Later that year, he was appointed as deputy minister of the Canadian government's new Department of Labour, and became active in policy domains from Japanese immigration to railways, notably the "Industrial Disputes Investigations Act" (1907) which sought to avert labour strikes by prior conciliation.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In 1901, King's roommate and best friend, Henry Albert Harper, died heroically during a skating party when a young woman fell through the ice of the partly frozen Ottawa River. Harper dove into the water to try to save her, and perished in the attempt. King led the effort to raise a memorial to Harper, which resulted in the erection of the Sir Galahad statue on Parliament Hill in 1905. In 1906, King published a memoir of Harper, entitled "The Secret of Heroism".


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: While deputy minister of labour, King was appointed to investigate the causes of and claims for compensation resulting from the 1907 anti-Oriental riots in Vancouver's Chinatown and Japantown. One of the claims for damages came from Chinese opium dealers, which led King to investigate narcotics use in Vancouver, British Columbia. Following the investigation King reported that white women were also opium users, not just Chinese men, and the federal government used the report to justify the first legislation outlawing narcotics in Canada.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King was first elected to Parliament as a Liberal in the 1908 federal election, representing Waterloo North. In 1909, King was appointed as the first-ever minister of labour by Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King's term as minister of labour was marked by two significant achievements. He led the passage of the "Industrial Disputes Investigation Act" and the "Combines Investigation Act", which he had shaped during his civil and parliamentary service. The legislation significantly improved the financial situation for millions of Canadian workers. In 1910 Mackenzie King introduced a bill aimed at establishing an 8-hour day on public works but it was killed in the Senate. He lost his seat in the 1911 general election, which saw the Conservatives defeat the Liberals and form government.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: After his defeat, King went on the lecture circuit on behalf of the Liberal Party. In June 1914 John D. Rockefeller Jr. hired him at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York City, to head its new Department of Industrial Research. It paid $12,000 per year, compared to the meagre $2,500 per year the Liberal Party was paying. He worked for the Foundation until 1918, forming a close working association and friendship with Rockefeller, advising him through the turbulent period of the 1913–1914 Strike and Ludlow Massacre–in what is known as the Colorado Coalfield War–at a family-owned coal company in Colorado, which subsequently set the stage for a new era in labour management in America. King became one of the earliest expert practitioners in the emerging field of industrial relations.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King was not a pacifist, but he showed little enthusiasm for the Great War; he faced criticism for not serving in Canada's military and instead working for the Rockefellers. But he was nearly 40 years old when the war began, and was not in good physical condition. He never gave up his Ottawa home, and travelled to the United States on an as-needed basis, performing service to the war effort by helping to keep war-related industries running smoothly.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In 1918, King, assisted by his friend F. A. McGregor, published "Industry and Humanity: A Study in the Principles Underlying Industrial Reconstruction", a dense, abstract book he wrote in response to the Ludlow massacre. It went over the heads of most readers, but revealed the practical idealism behind King's political thinking. He argued that capital and labour were natural allies, not foes, and that the community at large (represented by the government) should be the third and decisive party in industrial disputes. He expressed derision for syndicates and trades unions, chastising them for aiming at the "destruction by force of existing organization, and the transfer of industrial capital from the present possessors" to themselves.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Quitting the Rockefeller Foundation in February 1918, King became an independent consultant on labour issues for the next two years, earning $1,000 per week from leading American corporations. Even so, he kept his official residence in Ottawa, hoping for a call to duty.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In 1917, Canada was in crisis; King supported Liberal leader Wilfrid Laurier in his opposition to conscription, which was violently opposed in the province of Quebec. The Liberal party became deeply split, with several Anglophones joining the pro-conscription Union government, a coalition controlled by the Conservatives under Prime Minister Robert Borden. King returned to Canada to run in the 1917 election, which focused almost entirely on the conscription issue. Unable to overcome a landslide against Laurier, King lost in the constituency of York North, which his grandfather had once represented.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: The Liberal Party was deeply divided by Quebec's opposition to conscription and the agrarian revolt in Ontario and the Prairies. Levin argues that when King returned to politics in 1919, he was a rusty outsider with a weak base facing a nation bitterly split by language, regionalism and class. He outmaneuvered more senior competitors by embracing Laurier's legacy, championing labour interests, calling for welfare reform, and offering solid opposition to the Conservative enemy. When Laurier died in 1919, King was elected leader in the first Liberal leadership convention, defeating his three rivals on the fourth ballot. He won thanks to the support of the Quebec bloc, organized by Ernest Lapointe (1876–1941), later King's long-time lieutenant in Quebec. King could not speak French, but in election after election for the next 20 years (save for 1930), Lapointe produced the critical seats to give the Liberals control of the Commons. When campaigning in Quebec, King portrayed Lapointe as co-prime minister.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Once King became the Liberal leader in 1919 he paid closer attention to the Prairies, a fast-developing region. Viewing a sunrise in Alberta in 1920, he wrote in his diary, "I thought of the New Day, the New Social Order. It seems like Heaven's prophecy of the dawn of a new era, revealed to me." Pragmatism played a role as well, since his party depended for its survival on the votes of Progressive Party Members of Parliament, many of whom who represented farmers in Ontario and the Prairies. He convinced many Progressives to return to the Liberal fold.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In the 1921 election, King's Liberals defeated the Conservatives led by Prime Minister Arthur Meighen, winning a narrow majority of 118 out of 235 seats. The Conservatives won 50, the newly formed Progressive Party won 58 (but declined to form the official Opposition), and the remaining ten seats went to Labour MPs and Independents; most of these ten supported the Progressives. King became prime minister.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: As prime minister of Canada, King was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom on 20 June 1922 and was sworn at Buckingham Palace on October 11, 1923, during the 1923 Imperial Conference.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: During his first term of office, from 1921 to 1926, King sought to lower wartime taxes and, especially, wartime ethnic and labour tensions. "The War is over", he argued, "and for a long time to come it is going to take all that the energies of man can do to bridge the chasm and heal the wounds which the War has made in our social life."


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Despite prolonged negotiations, King was unable to attract the Progressives into his government, but once Parliament opened, he relied on their support to defeat non-confidence motions from the Conservatives. King was opposed in some policies by the Progressives, who opposed the high tariffs of the National Policy. King faced a delicate balancing act of reducing tariffs enough to please the Prairie-based Progressives, but not so much as to alienate his vital supporters in industrial Ontario and Quebec, who perceived tariffs were necessary to compete with American imports.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Over time, the Progressives gradually weakened. Their effective and passionate leader, Thomas Crerar, resigned to return to his grain business, and was replaced by the more placid Robert Forke, who joined King's cabinet in 1926 as Minister of Immigration and Colonization after becoming a Liberal-Progressive. Socialist reformer J. S. Woodsworth gradually gained influence and power, and King was able to reach an accommodation with him on policy matters. In any event, the Progressive caucus lacked the party discipline that was traditionally enforced by the Liberals and Conservatives. The Progressives had campaigned on a promise that their MP's would represent their constituents first. King used this to his advantage, as he could always count on at least a handful of Progressive MP's to shore up his near-majority position for any crucial vote.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In 1923, King's government passed the "Chinese Immigration Act, 1923" banning most forms of Chinese immigration to Canada. Immigration from most countries was controlled or restricted in some way, but only the Chinese were completely prohibited from immigrating. This was after various members of the federal and some provincial governments (especially British Columbia) put pressure on the federal government to discourage Chinese immigration.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Also in 1923, the government modified the "Immigration Act" to allow former subjects of Austria-Hungary to once again enter Canada. Ukrainian immigration resumed after restrictions were put in place during World War I.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King had a long-standing concern with city planning and the development of the national capital, since he had been trained in the settlement house movement and envisioned town planning and garden cities as a component of his broader program of social reform. He drew on four broad traditions in early North American planning: social planning, the Parks Movement, the City Scientific, and the City Beautiful. King's greatest impact was as the political champion for the planning and development of Ottawa, Canada's national capital. His plans, much of which were completed in the two decades after his death, were part of a century of federal planning that repositioned Ottawa as a national space in the City Beautiful style. Confederation Square, for example, was initially planned to be a civic plaza to balance the nearby federal presence of Parliament Hill. The Great War monument was not installed until the 1939 royal visit, and King intended that the replanning of the capital would be the World War I memorial. However, the symbolic meaning of the World War I monument gradually expanded to become the place of remembrance for all Canadian war sacrifices.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King called an election in 1925, in which the Conservatives won the most seats, but not a majority in the House of Commons. King held onto power with the support of the Progressives. A corruption scandal discovered late in his first term involved misdeeds around the expansion of the Beauharnois Canal in Quebec; this led to extensive inquiries and eventually a Royal Commission, which exposed the Beauharnois Scandal. The resulting press coverage damaged King's party in the election. Early in his second term, another corruption scandal, this time in the Department of Customs, was revealed, which led to more support for the Conservatives and Progressives, and the possibility that King would be forced to resign, if he lost sufficient support in the Commons. King had no personal connection to this scandal, although one of his own appointees was at the heart of it. Opposition leader Meighen unleashed his fierce invective towards King, stating he was hanging onto power "like a lobster with lockjaw".`


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In June 1926, King, facing a House of Commons vote connected to the customs scandal that could force his government to resign, advised the Governor General, Lord Byng, to dissolve Parliament and call another election. Byng, however, declined the Prime Minister's request – the first time in Canadian history that a request for dissolution was refused; and, to date, the only time the governor general of Canada has done so. Byng instead asked Leader of the Opposition, Arthur Meighen, to form government. Although the Conservatives held more seats in the House than any other party, they did not control a majority. They were soon themselves defeated on a motion of non-confidence on July 2. Meighen himself then requested a dissolution of Parliament, which Byng now granted.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King ran the 1926 Liberal election campaign largely on the issue of the right of Canadians to govern themselves and against the interference of the Crown. The Liberal Party was returned to power with a minority government, which bolstered King's position on the issue and the position of the Prime Minister generally. King later pushed for greater Canadian autonomy at the 1926 Imperial Conference which elicited the Balfour Declaration stating that upon the granting of dominion status, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Irish Free State, while still autonomous communities within the British Empire, ceased to be subordinate to the United Kingdom. Thus, the governor general ceased to represent the British government and was solely the personal representative of the sovereign while becoming a representative of The Crown. This ultimately was formalized in the Statute of Westminster 1931. On September 14, King and his party won the election with a plurality of seats in the Commons: 116 seats to the Conservatives' 91 in a 245-member House.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: During the Chanak Crisis of 1922, King refused to support the British without first consulting Parliament, while the Conservative leader, Arthur Meighen, supported Britain. King sought a Canadian voice independent of London in foreign affairs. In September 1922 the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, appealed repeatedly to King for Canadian support in the crisis. King coldly replied that the Canadian Parliament would decide what policy to follow, making clear it would not be bound by London's suggestions. King wrote in his diary of the British appeal: "I confess it annoyed me. It is drafted designedly to play the imperial game, to test out centralization versus autonomy as regards European wars...No [Canadian] contingent will go without parliament being summoned in the first instance". The British were disappointed with King's response but the crisis was soon resolved, as King had anticipated. After Chanak, King was concerned about the possibility that Canada might go to war because of its connections with Britain, writing to Violet Markham:


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Anything like centralization in London, to say nothing of a direct or indirect attempt on the part of those in office in Downing Street to tell the people of the Dominions what they should or should not do, and to dictate their duty in matters of foreign policy, is certain to prove just as injurious to the so-called 'imperial solidarity' as any attempt at interference in questions of purely domestic concern. If membership within the British Commonwealth means participation by the Dominions in any and every war in which Great Britain becomes involved, without consultation, conference, or agreement of any kind in advance, I can see no hope for an enduring relationship.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: For years, halibut stocks were depleting in Canadian and American fishing areas in the North Pacific ocean. In 1923, King's government negotiated the Halibut Treaty with the United States. The treaty annually prohibited commercial fishing from November 16 to February 15; violation would result in seizure. The agreement was notable in which Canada negotiated it without a British delegate at the table and without ratification from the British Parliament; though not official, convention stated that the United Kingdom would have a seat at the table or be a signatory to any agreement Canada was part of. King argued the situation only concerned Canada and the United States. After, the British accepted King's intentions to send a separate Canadian diplomat to Washington D.C. (to represent Canada's interests) rather than a British one. At the 1923 Imperial Conference, Britain accepted the Halibut Treaty, arguing it set a new precedent for the role of British Dominions.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King expanded the Department of External Affairs, founded in 1909, to further promote Canadian autonomy from Britain. The new department took some time to develop, but over time it significantly increased the reach and projection of Canadian diplomacy. Prior to this, Canada had relied on British diplomats who owed their first loyalty to London. After the King–Byng episode, King recruited many high-calibre people for the new venture, including future prime minister Lester Pearson and influential career administrators Norman Robertson and Hume Wrong. This project was a key element of his overall strategy, setting Canada on a course independent of Britain, of former colonizer France, as well as of the neighbouring powerful United States.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Throughout his tenure, King led Canada from a dominion with responsible government to an autonomous nation within the British Commonwealth. King asserted Canadian autonomy against the British government's attempts to turn the Commonwealth into an alliance. His biographer asserts that "in this struggle Mackenzie King was the constant aggressor". The Canadian High Commissioner to Britain, Vincent Massey, claimed that an "anti-British bias" was "one of the most powerful factors in his make-up".


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In domestic affairs, King strengthened the Liberal policy of increasing the powers of the provincial governments by transferring to the governments of Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan the ownership of the crown lands within those provinces, as well as the subsoil rights; these in particular would become increasingly important, as petroleum and other natural resources proved very abundant. In collaboration with the provincial governments, he inaugurated a system of old-age pensions based on need. In February 1930, he appointed Cairine Wilson as the first female senator in Canadian history.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Reductions in taxation were carried out such as exemptions under the sales tax on commodities and enlarged exemptions of income tax, while in 1929 taxes on cables, telegrams, and railway and steamship tickets were removed.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Measures were also carried out to support farmers. In 1922, for instance, a measure was introduced and passed “restoring the Crow's Nest Pass railways rates on grain and flour moving eastwards from the prairie provinces.” A Farm Loan Board was set up to provide rural credit; advancing funds to farmers “at rates of interest and under terms not obtainable from the usual sources,” while other measures were carried out such as preventative measures against foot and mouth disease and the establishment of grading standards “to assist in the marketing of agricultural products” both at home and overseas. In addition, the "Combines Investigation Act of 1923" was aimed at safeguarding consumers and producers from exploitation.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King's government was in power at the beginning of the Great Depression, but was slow to respond to the mounting crisis. He felt that the crisis was a temporary swing of the business cycle and that the economy would soon recover without government intervention. Critics said he was out of touch. Just prior to the election, King carelessly remarked that he "would not give a five-cent piece" to Tory provincial governments for unemployment relief. The opposition made this remark a catch-phrase; the main issue was the deterioration in the economy and whether the prime minister was out of touch with the hardships of ordinary people. The Liberals lost the election of 1930 to the Conservative Party, led by Richard Bedford Bennett. The popular vote was very close between the two parties, with the Liberals actually earning more votes than in 1926, but the Conservatives had a geographical advantage that turned into enough seats to give a majority.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: After his loss, King stayed on as leader of the Liberals, becoming the leader of the Opposition for the second time. King began his years as Opposition leader convinced that his government did not deserve defeat and that his government's financial caution helped the economy prosper. He blamed the financial crisis on the speculative excesses of businessmen and on the weather cycle. King argued that the worst mistake Canada could react to the Depression was to raise tariffs and restrict international trade. He believed that over time, voters would learn that they had been deceived by Bennett and would come to appreciate the King government's policy of frugality and free trade.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King's policy was to refrain from offering advice or alternative policies. Indeed, his policy preferences were not much different from Bennett's, and he let the Conservative government have its way. Though he gave the impression of sympathy with progressive and liberal causes, he had no enthusiasm for the New Deal of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (which Bennett eventually tried to emulate, after floundering without solutions for several years), and he never advocated massive government action to alleviate the Depression in Canada.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: As Opposition leader, King denounced the Bennett government's budget deficits as irresponsible, though didn't suggest his own idea of how budgets could be balanced. King also denounced the "blank cheques" parliament was asked to approve for relief and delayed the passage of these bills despite the objections of some Liberals who feared the public might conclude that the Liberals had no sympathy for those struggling. Each year, after the throne speech and the budget, King introduced amendments that blamed the depression on Bennett's policy of high tariffs.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: By the time the 1935 election arrived, the Bennett government was heavily unpopular due to their handling of the depression. Using the slogan "King or Chaos", the Liberals won a landslide victory, winning 173 out of the Commons' 245 seats and reducing the Conservatives to a rump of 40; this was the largest majority government at the time.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: For the first time in his political career, King led an undisputed Liberal majority government. Upon his return to office in October 1935, he seemed to demonstrate a commitment (like Franklin Roosevelt) to the underprivileged, speaking of a new era where "poverty and adversity, want and misery are the enemies which liberalism will seek to banish from the land". Once again, King appointed himself as secretary of state for external affairs; he held that post until 1946.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Promising a much-desired trade treaty with the U.S., the King government passed the 1935 Reciprocal Trade Agreement. It marked the turning point in Canadian-American economic relations, reversing the disastrous trade war of 1930–31, lowering tariffs, and yielding a dramatic increase in trade. More subtly, it revealed to the prime minister and President Roosevelt that they could work together well.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King's government introduced the National Employment Commission in 1936. As for the unemployed, King was hostile to federal relief. However, the first compulsory national unemployment insurance program was instituted in August 1940 under the King government after a constitutional amendment was agreed to by all of the Canadian provinces, to concede to the federal government legislative power over unemployment insurance. New Brunswick, Alberta and Quebec had held out against the federal government's desire to amend the constitution but ultimately acceded to its request, Alberta being the last to do so. The "British North America Act" Section 91 was amended by adding in a heading designated Number 2A simply in the words "Unemployment Insurance".


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: Over the next thirteen years, a wide range of reforms similar to those association with the New Deal were realized during Mackenzie King's last period in office as prime minister. In 1937, the age for blind persons to qualify for old-age pensions was reduced to 40 in 1937, and later to 21 in 1947. In 1939, compulsory contributions for pensions for low-income widows and orphans were introduced (although these only covered the regularly employed) while depressed farmers were subsidized from that same year onwards. In 1944, family allowances were introduced, and from 1948 the federal government subsidized medical services in the provinces.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: The provincial governments faced declining revenues and higher welfare costs. They needed federal grants and loans to reduce their deficits. In a December 1935 conference with the premiers, King announced that the federal grants would be increased until the spring of 1936. At this stage, King's main goal was to have a federal system in which each level of government would pay for its programs out of its own tax sources.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: King only reluctantly accepted a Keynesian solution that involved federal deficit spending, tax cuts, and subsidies to the housing market. King and his finance minister, Charles Avery Dunning, had planned to balance the budget for 1938. However, some colleagues, to King's surprise, opposed that idea and instead favoured job creation to stimulate the economy, citing British economist John Maynard Keynes's theory that governments could increase employment by spending during times of low private investment. In a politically motivated move, King accepted their arguments and hence ran deficits in both 1938 and 1939.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: The various provinces were assisted by the "Federal Unemployment and Agricultural Assistance Act of 1938" and the "Youth Training Act of 1939" to create training programs for young persons, while an amendment to the Criminal Code (which received Royal assent in May 1939) provided against refusal to hire, or dismissal, "solely because of a person's membership in a lawful trade-union or association".


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: The "Vocational Training Co-ordination Act of 1942" provided an impetus to the provinces to set up facilities for postsecondary vocational training, and in 1948 the "Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act" was passed, which safeguarded the rights of workers to join unions while requiring employers to recognize unions chosen by their employees.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: The Federal Home Improvement Plan of 1937 provided subsidized rates of interest on rehabilitation loans to 66,900 homes, while the "National Housing Act of 1938" made provision for the building of low-rent housing. Another Housing Act was later passed in 1944 with the intention of providing federally guaranteed loans or mortgages to individuals who wished to repair or construct dwellings through their own initiative.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: While King opposed Bennett's Canadian Wheat Board in 1935, he accepted its operation. However, by 1938, the board had sold its holdings and King proposed returning to the open market. This angered Western Canadian farmers, who favoured a board that would give them a guaranteed minimum price, with the federal government covering any losses. Facing a public campaign to keep the board, King and his minister of agriculture, James Garfield Gardiner, reluctantly extended the board's life and offered a minimum price that would protect the farmers from further declines.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In 1937, King's government established the Trans-Canada Air Lines (the precursor to Air Canada), as a subsidiary of the crown corporation, Canadian National Railways. It was created to provide air service to all regions of Canada.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In 1936, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) became the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which was a crown corporation. The CBC had a better organizational structure, more secure funding through the use of a licence fee on receiving sets (initially set at $2.50), and less vulnerability to political pressure. When Bennett's Conservatives were governing and the Liberals were in Opposition, the Liberals accused the network of being biased towards the Conservatives. During the 1935 election campaign, the CRBC broadcast a series of 15 minutes soap operas called "Mr. Sage" which were critical of King and the Liberal Party. Decried as political propaganda, the incident was one factor in King's decision to replace the CRBC.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In 1938, King's government invited British documentary maker John Grierson to study the situation of the government's film production (which at that time was the responsibility of the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau). King believed that Canadian cinema deserved an increased presence in Canadian theatres. This report prompted the "National Film Act", which created the National Film Board of Canada in 1939. It was created to produce and distribute films serving the national interest and was intended specifically to make Canada better known both domestically and internationally. Gierson was appointed the first film commissioner in October 1939.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: After 1936, the prime minister lost patience when Western Canadians preferred radical alternatives such as the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) and Social Credit to his middle-of-the-road liberalism. Indeed, he came close to writing off the region with his comment that the prairie dust bowl was "part of the U.S. desert area. I doubt if it will be of any real use again." Instead he paid more attention to the industrial regions and the needs of Ontario and Quebec, particularly with respect to the proposed St. Lawrence Seaway project with the United States.


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In 1937, Maurice Duplessis, the conservative Union Nationale premier of Quebec, passed the Padlock Law (the "Act to Protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda"), which intimidated labour leaders by threatening to lock up their offices for any alleged communist activities. King's government, which had already repealed the section of the Criminal Code banning unlawful associations, considered disallowing this bill. However, King's cabinet minister, Ernest Lapointe, believed this would harm the Liberal Party's electoral chances in Quebec. King and his English-Canadian ministers accepted Lapointe's view; as King wrote in his diary in July 1938, "we were prepared to accept what really should not, in the name of liberalism, be tolerated for one moment."


title: William Lyon Mackenzie King

text: In March 1936, in response to the German remilitarization of the Rhineland, King had the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom inform the British government that if Britain went to war with Germany over the Rhineland issue, Canada would remain neutral. In June 1937, during an Imperial Conference in London of the prime ministers of every dominion, King informed British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that Canada would only go to war if Britain were directly attacked, and that if Britain were to become involved in a continental war then Chamberlain was not to expect Canadian support.