announced for HBO Max in which Schuyler would not be involved. Following months of silence and speculation of its cancellation, it was confirmed scrapped in November that year. Degrassi has been critically acclaimed and has encountered controversy over on multiple occasions for episodes depicting teenage pregnancy, abortion, and LGBT issues, with episodes of multiple incarnations being altered, withheld, or pulled by networks around the world. Having received numerous awards, nominations, and honours across its four-decade history, it is regarded as one of Canada's greatest television achievements and one of the most internationally successful franchises in Canadian history. Several actors have achieved wider recognition and stardom since appearing on Degrassi, most notably rapper Drake and actress Nina Dobrev, both of Degrassi: The Next Generation. History Development, The Kids of Degrassi Street, and early accolades (1979–1986) In 1976, Linda Schuyler, a Grade 7 and Grade 8 media teacher at Earl Grey Senior Public School in Toronto, founded Playing With Time Inc. with her partner Kit Hood. Schuyler had met Hood, who had a career in editing television commercials, when she needed help from an experienced editor to save the "muddled footage" of one of her projects. As a media teacher, Schuyler encouraged her students to use video as a narrative tool. Bruce Mackey, Earl Grey's librarian and a friend of Schuyler, ordered several books about filmmaking, one being Ida Makes a Movie, by the American author Kay Chorao. Mackey did not realize that it was a children's book and discarded it, but Schuyler developed an interest in adapting the book into a film. Before leaving, Schuyler sought legal advice from Stephen Stohn, a young entertainment lawyer who had recently graduated from law school, and who would eventually become her producing partner and husband. Stohn recalled in his 2018 memoir Whatever It Takes that he advised Schuyler that being out of print, buying the rights to the book on her own would be "relatively straightforward", and that involving lawyers would make the process "unnecessarily complicated". Stohn instead gave Schuyler a boilerplate form for permission to take with her to New York. Schuyler purchased the rights for $200. The feline characters were changed into human children, and the story was also largely repurposed. The film featured production techniques that Schuyler and Kit Hood felt were missing from children's programming: it was shot in a cinéma vérité style, with handheld camera work and entirely on-location