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Create AccountOther large-scale spectacles, Les Plaques tectoniques (1990), Les Aiguilles et l'opium (1991) and Le Polygraphe (1992), have followed, attracting the highest critical acclaim at home and abroad.
Gilles Latulippe, Québec actor, comedian and theatre director (born 31 August 1937 in Montréal, Québec; died 23 September 2014 in Montréal, Québec).
Dominic Champagne, playwright, scriptwriter, director, and show designer (born 1963 in Sorel, Québec). Dominic Champagne has been active on the Québec performing arts scene for over 25 years.
Alain Simard, OC, COQ impresario, talent manager, producer, businessman (born 19 January 1950 in Montreal, QC). Alain Simard has been a leading figure in Quebec’s entertainment sector since the early 1970s. He is responsible for the conception and founding of some of Canada’s biggest annual festivals, including the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (FIJM) and the FrancoFolies de Montréal, one of the largest French-language music festivals in the world. Simard is also chairman of the board of Équipe Spectra, which manages and operates festivals and performance venues, mounts stage productions, runs a record label and manages artists. In 2003, Simard was named the most influential person in the cultural world by the Montreal newspaper La Presse. He is a Chevalier of France’s Arts et des Lettres, of the Ordre de la Pléiade, and of the Ordre national du Québec; as well as an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Hannah Moscovitch, playwright (born 5 June 1978 in Ottawa, ON). Hannah Moscovitch is one of Canada’s most produced and prominent contemporary playwrights. Her plays tackle complex and often politically charged issues and have won multiple Dora Awards. Moscovitch has also been nominated for the Carol Bolt Award, the Toronto Arts Council Foundation Emerging Artist Award, the K.M. Hunter Award, and the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is the first playwright to win a Trillium Book Award and the first Canadian woman to win a Windham–Campbell Literature Prize, a $150,000 award from Yale University. She also won a 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for her drama Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes.
Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer, actor (born 13 December 1929 in Toronto, ON; died 5 February 2021 in Weston, Connecticut). A great-grandson of Prime Minister Sir John Abbott, Christopher Plummer was an international star of theatre, film and television. He was Canada’s most distinguished movie star in the classical mould — the New York Times hailed him as “the finest classical actor in America.” He took on innumerable larger-than-life roles, including Cyrano de Bergerac, King Lear, Hamlet, Rudyard Kipling, John Barrymore, and Baron von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965), one of the most popular films of all time. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, two Emmy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Film Independent Spirit Award, a Canadian Screen Award and a Genie Award. He received lifetime achievement awards from the Governors General’s Awards, the Canadian Screen Awards and the National Arts Club of America. A Companion of the Order of Canada, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame and Canada's Walk of Fame.
André Jobin, tenor, actor, stage designer (born 20 January 1933 in Québec, QC). The son of tenor, Raoul Jobin, André began his artistic training in Paris, France. André had a successful career as a singer and actor, and he performed in operas and operettas throughout Europe and North America (see Opera Performance).
Jean-Marie Lapointe, OC, OQ, singer, songwriter, comedian, actor, politician (born 6 December 1935 in Price, QC, died 18 November 2022 in Montreal, QC). As a cabaret performer for more than three decades, Jean Lapointe embodied the traditional American-style show in French with a balance of tragicomic songs, good-natured humour, impersonations and comedy sketches. From 1955 to 1974, he performed with Jérôme Lemay as the duo Les Jérolas. A prolific singer-songwriter, Lapointe recorded hundreds of songs, including the popular hits “Pleurire,” “Chante-la ta chanson,” “Rire aux larmes” and “Mon oncle Edmond.” Also a Genie- and Jutra Award-winning actor, he appeared in the classic films Les Ordres (1974) and J.A. Martin, photographe (1977), and played Maurice Duplessis in a popular TV mini-series. He served as a Liberal Senator from 2001 until 2010, and has been named to the Order of Canada and the Ordre National du Quebec.
Gordon Edward Pinsent, CC, FRSC, actor, writer, director (born 12 July 1930 in Grand Falls, NL; died 25 February 2023). A cultural icon in his native Newfoundland, Gordon Pinsent was a fixture in Canadian film, theatre and television for more than 60 years. Often described as a Renaissance man, the former soldier and noted painter rose to prominence as the lead in CBC-TV’s Quentin Durgens, M.P. (1966–69). He adapted two of his novels, The Rowdyman and John and the Missus, to the big screen, starring in both and directing the latter. His more than 150 credits as an actor include the movies The Shipping News (2001), Away from Her (2006) and The Grand Seduction (2013), as well as the TV series Street Legal, Due South, The Red Green Show and Republic of Doyle. A Companion of the Order of Canada and an inductee to Canada’s Walk of Fame, Pinsent won a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award in 2004 and numerous lifetime achievement awards.
Andrée Lachapelle, actor (born 13 novembre 1931 in Montreal, QC; died 21 novembre 2019 in Montreal). In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Andrée Lachapelle put her stamp on well over 200 characters in Quebec theatre, television and film. While she excelled in conventional distinguished roles, as lovers or neurotics, she also portrayed powerful professional women with depth and a broad emotional range.
Rose Ouellette, CQ, actress, author, composer (born 25 August 1903 in Montreal, QC; died 14 September 1996 in Montreal). With a career spanning over seven decades, burlesque actor Rose Ouellette holds the distinction of being the first woman ever to have directed two individual playhouses in North America. She was made a Chevalière of the Ordre national du Québec in 1990.
Michel Dumont, OQ, actor, artistic director, translator and narrator (born 29 January 1941 in Kénogami [now Saguenay], QC; died 13 August 2020 in Saint-Lambert, QC). As artistic director of the Théâtre Jean-Duceppe for more than 30 years, Michel Dumont was regarded as a leading figure in Quebec theatre. He acted in more than 70 plays, some 15 TV series and a number of films. He won the Prix Gémeaux for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Drama Series three times (1998, 2003, 2013) and was made an Officer of the Ordre national du Québec in 2013.
André Brassard, director (born 27 August 1946 in Montreal, QC; died 11 October 2022).
The following article is part of an exhibit. Past exhibits are not updated.
Driven to overcome histories of prejudice and marginalization, as women and as people of African descent, Black women are among Canada’s most innovative artists. With their fingers on the pulse of this multi-tasking, multi-disciplinary, 21st-century culture, the 15 dynamic artists featured in this exhibit — a mix of poets, playwrights, filmmakers, musicians and visual artists — refuse to be limited to one medium or style.
Award-winning poet Dionne Brand is also a novelist, filmmaker and influential professor, while Lillian Allen thrives as a dub poet, declaiming her verses to reggae accompaniment. trey anthony is a comedian as well as a ground-breaking playwright and screenwriter. All of these women and the many others below are also, in one way or another, passionate activists and committed advocates who are deeply involved in their communities.
Pierre Perrault, OQ, film director, poet, writer (born 29 June 1927 in Montréal, QC; died 23 June 1999 in Montréal). Pierre Perrault was one of Quebec’s most significant and celebrated artists. His collective work in radio, film, television and print explores the genesis and nature of French Canadian culture and identity. A pioneer of direct cinema, his elegiac 1963 documentary Pour la suite du monde, co-directed with Michel Brault, is a landmark in Canadian cinema. His writing received three Governor General’s Literary Awards: for poetry, theatre and non-fiction. An Officer of the Ordre national du Québec, Perrault received the Prix Ludger-Duvernay, Prix Albert-Tessier, Prix Victor-Barbeau, the Médaille des Arts et des Lettres from the Government of France, and the Médaille d’argent du Mouvement national des Québécois et Québécoises.
