The Man Who Made Canadian Kids Laugh

He lives down the road. He drives a Rambler. He is, by any reasonable measure, having his best days ever.

Blair Peters grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, loved cartoons the way some kids love hockey, and was lucky enough to find Sheridan College in Oakville — Canada's animation school, the place that trained a generation of the country's best animators. From there, he took his first job at Crawley Films in Ottawa, one of Canada's oldest production houses, and then moved west. To Vancouver. To the beginning of something.

In 1988, Blair Peters and his colleague Chris Bartleman co-founded Studio B Productions. The name was modest. The ambition was not. Over the next two decades, Studio B would produce more than 1,000 half-hours of animated television, selling to over 100 countries and airing on Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Teletoon, YTV, and the BBC. It became one of the most prolific animation studios in Canadian history — and it did it from Vancouver, at a time when Vancouver was not yet the production powerhouse it is today.

"We are super excited to bring these iconic Canadian characters to a whole new audience."— Blair Peters, Animation Magazine, October 2022

The Shows That Shaped a Generation

If you grew up in Canada in the late 1990s or 2000s, Blair Peters made you laugh. Yvon of the Yukon (1999) — a French explorer frozen in the Yukon for 300 years and thawed out by a dog — was absurdist, warm, and unmistakably Canadian. Being Ian (2004), created by Ian James Corlett and produced by Studio B and Nelvana for YTV, followed a boy obsessed with making movies in a suburb that refused to cooperate. And Kid vs. Kat (2008) — a boy, his sister's mysterious alien cat, and the eternal suburban battle — ran for two seasons on YTV and became one of the most internationally successful Canadian animated series of its era.

These were not cheap shows. They were crafted with the kind of care that comes from a studio that understood its audience — kids who were funny, curious, and deserved better than filler. Studio B received numerous awards over its two decades, and the shows it produced are still remembered with genuine affection by the generation that grew up watching them on Saturday mornings.

The Exit, and What Came After

In 2007, after nearly twenty years, Blair Peters and Chris Bartleman sold Studio B Productions to DHX Media — a deal reported at the time as worth up to CAD $20 million. Peters stayed with the company through the transition, remaining until 2011. Then he did what a lot of people who have spent two decades building something do: he stopped, looked around, and thought about what he actually wanted to do next.

The answer, it turned out, was teaching. Peters joined Capilano University as an instructor in Entrepreneurship Skills for Animators — passing on not just the craft of animation but the harder knowledge of how to build a career, run a studio, and survive the industry. He also launched Blair Peters Animation, a consulting company focused on the animation industry, working with creators and developing series of his own.

He moved to the Sunshine Coast. He bought a Rambler convertible. He started having his best days ever.

The Beachcombers, Animated

The Beachcombers is Canada's second-longest-running scripted television series. Created by L.S. Strange and Marc Strange, it ran for 387 episodes over 18 seasons on CBC from 1972 to 1990, watched by more than one million Canadian viewers per episode in its prime. Set in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast — the same coast where Blair Peters now lives — it followed Greek-Canadian log salvager Nick Adonidas, his partner Jesse Jim, and the scheming, irresistible Relic. It was ahead of its time: Indigenous characters and storylines, environmental themes, and a distinctly Canadian sense of place that felt nothing like American television.

In 2022 — the show's 50th anniversary — Peters teamed up with Beachcombers writer-producer Nick Orchard, who worked on the original series and brings more than 30 years of experience to the project. The two have inked a deal with the show's original creators and are developing a new animated series based on the classic. The goal, as Peters put it in Animation Magazine, is to "take all the best parts of the original series and build on them to tell stories with humor and heart, while tackling real issues the world faces today."

The animated Beachcombers is designed to reach a younger, wider audience — including the US market, in the way that Schitt's Creek crossed over. The show has already been licensed to over 35 countries in its original form and versioned into numerous languages. There is a world waiting for these characters. Peters knows it. He has been making shows for that world for most of his adult life.

The Rambler

The Rambler deserves its own paragraph. The AMC Rambler Classic convertible — built by American Motors Corporation, the last truly independent American car company — was never the flashiest car on the road. It was practical, well-engineered, and stubbornly its own thing in an era dominated by the Big Three. Drop the top, though, and it was also, for a certain kind of person, exactly right.

Blair Peters is that kind of person. A man who spent twenty years building something independent, something that did not look like everything else, something that was stubbornly its own thing — and then sold it, moved to the coast, and found a convertible that understood him. The Rambler sits in the driveway, top down when the weather allows. It is, by all accounts, in excellent condition.

A Note of Gratitude

There is a generation of Canadian animators who learned their craft, their business sense, and their sense of possibility partly from Blair Peters — at Studio B, at Capilano University, and in the consulting work he has done since. The list of people whose careers he has touched, directly or indirectly, is long. The list of Canadian kids who grew up laughing at his shows is longer.

That is a good life's work. More than good. And it is not finished. The Beachcombers is coming back. The Rambler is in the driveway. The Sunshine Coast is beautiful in March.

Blair Peters is having his best days ever. We are glad he is our neighbour.