John N. Smith completed a BA in political philosophy at McGill University in Montreal in 1964. He worked as a stevedore, tobacco picker, construction worker and taxi driver before joining the CBC as a researcher in 1968.
Within a year, he was producing the prime-time public affairs program The Way It Is, then moved to the private sector to produce the critically acclaimed series The Fabulous Sixties and Here Come the Seventies, and won an Emmy award for the series 51st State, produced for the New York public television station WNET.

Upon joining the National Film Board in1972, Smith's first project was Filmglish, a series of offbeat and amusing films for teaching English as a second language. At the same time, he worked on segments of West, Atlanticanada and Pacificanada, three television series designed to explore and heighten awareness of the regional and linguistic differences in Canada.
Interested in exploring the emotional undercurrents that people experience when faced with trauma, Smith decided to try his hand at fiction. In 1976, he directed Bargain Basement, a dramatic short that won three awards. This was followed by his most personally satisfying film, Happiness Is Loving Your Teacher (1977), and the Genie-award-winning Revolution's Orphans (1979). His dramatic short First Winter was nominated for an Oscar in 1981.

His fascination with the performing arts and the challenge of capturing movement on film led to a change of direction resulting in the production of three films on theatre and dance: Acting Class and For the Love of Dance in 1981 and Gala in 1982. These last two films won the New York Dance Film Festival grand prize in 1982 and 1983.
Smith is one of the few filmmakers in the world to have directed an IMAX film. River Journey/Au fil de l'eau, a gripping tour of Canada's waterways, was the hit of the 1984 New Orleans World Fair.
That same year, he teamed up with Giles Walker to co-direct The Masculine Mystique, a humorous docu-drama about four men's emotions, opinions and reactions to the women's liberation movement.

Smith's attention then returned to dance. In First Stop, China, he recorded Les Grand Ballets Canadiens' triumphal Far East tour in 1984. Starting in 1986, Smith co-wrote and directed a string of films having to do with childhood and adolescence. Sitting in Limbo (1986) explores the problems of West Indian teenagers in Montreal, while Train of Dreams (1987) offers a gritty portrait of a 17-year-old who ends up in an institution for juvenile delinquents. This alternative drama won four awards.
After chronicling the illegal landing of a boatload of refugees in Welcome to Canada (1989), Smith focused again on children and adolescents in The Boys of St. Vincent (1992), a two-part drama about residents of a Catholic orphanage in the 1970s and their desperate struggle to escape physical and sexual abuse from the priests in whose care they had been entrusted. Although the film provoked a storm of public controversy, it won eight awards and was one of the biggest hits in the history the NFB. Its first national telecast on the CBC in 1993 drew five million viewers for the two parts. In 1994, it was launched on the home video market in Australia and New Zealand and broadcast on their national commercial television networks. Several American magazines rated it one of the top 10 films of 1994.
Pursuing his interest in troubled adolescents, Smith next directed Dangerous Minds, a Hollywood feature starring Michelle Pfeiffer.
You can find more details on the films of John N. Smith in the Film Collection.

Bibliography

"Mr Smith Goes to War: An Award-Winning Director Is Scoring Some Big Victories." Maclean's, No. 106, 50 (December 13, 1993): p 48-51.