Search for ""

Dick Todd. Singer (baritone), b Montreal 4 Aug 1914, d ? He sang at 17 with George Sims' dance band at Belmont Park in Montreal and was subsequently heard on local and national (CBC) radio, the latter with the orchestras of Allan McIver and Lucio Agostini. He moved to New York in 1938.

Patrick Laurence Perry Wedd, organist-choirmaster, music director, harpsichordist, composer (born 4 January 1948 in Simcoe, ON; died 19 May 2019 in Montreal, QC). Patrick Wedd began his career as an organist-choirmaster at the age of 12. He held positions at churches throughout Southern Ontario, in Vancouver from 1970 to 1986, and in Montreal until his retirement in 2018. Wedd performed extensively in Canada and the United States. His recitals included premieres of works by Thomas Baker, Alex Pauk and Jerome Summers. He gave inaugural recitals on the first Casavant organ in Adelaide, Australia, and the Gabriel Kney organ at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall. As a composer, he had works commissioned by the Vancouver Chamber Choir, the British Columbia Choral Federation, the Vancouver Bach Choir and the Tudor Singers of Montreal.

Alfred Bernier. Teacher, musicologist, choirmaster, composer, b Montreal 26 Oct 1896, d there 25 Apr 1953; BA (Montreal) 1919, PH D (Montreal) 1925, L TH (Montreal) 1932, D MUS sacred music (Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, Rome) 1939.

Drapell first established his reputation with a series of large, primarily red, abstract canvases, which attracted little attention in Canada until one appeared on the cover of Art International (1978) and another was purchased by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1979).

Paul Morin, lawyer, poet and translator (b at Montréal 6 Apr 1889; d at Beloeil, Qué Sept 1963). Admitted to the Québec Bar in 1910, Morin decided to study COMPARATIVE LITERATURE at the Sorbonne, Paris. His doctoral thesis on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was published in 1913.

Lynn Coady, writer, editor, playwright, journalist (born 24 January 1970 in Port Hawkesbury, Cape Breton, NS). An acclaimed novelist and short story writer, Lynn Coady is an acute, often hilarious observer of the absurdities and indignities of everyday life in small town Canada.

Annamaria (b Maria Caliopi) Popescu. Mezzo-soprano, b Montreal 24 Feb 1961; diploma (Academy of Vocal Arts, Philadelphia) 1987. Annamaria Popescu grew up in a Romanian Canadian family in Montreal, singing in the Orthodox church at which her father was the priest.

The two went to New York in 1873 to found the Daily Graphic, the first daily paper to use photographic illustrations. Canadian Illustrated News appeared weekly 1869-83.

Flora MacDonald Denison, née Merrill, feminist, journalist, businesswoman (b in N Hastings County, Ont 20? Feb 1867; d at Toronto 23 May 1921). Denison, who combined running a successful Toronto dressmaking business with a writing career, was active in the suffrage movement in Toronto from 1906.

Merrill Denison, playwright, journalist, writer, historian (b at Detroit, Mich 23 June 1893; d at San Diego, Calif 13 June 1975). English Canada's first important 20th-century playwright, he emerged from the Canadian Little Theatre movement in the 1920s.

Rita Lafontaine, OC, OQ, actor (born 8 June 1939 in Trois-Rivières, QC; died 4 April 2016 in Montréal).

Frederick Dally, professional portrait and landscape photographer (b at Southwark, Eng 29 July 1838; d at Wolverhampton, Eng 28 July 1914). Educated at Christ's Hospital, London, Dally arrived in Victoria at the height of the Cariboo gold rush in 1862.

Walter Curtin, photojournalist (b at Vienna, Austria 16 Aug 1911; d at Toronto 21 Oct 2007). One of the most prominent photojournalists and commercial photographers in Canada during the 1950s and 60s, Walter Curtin published his photo essays in the country's most prominent magazines of the time.

Louis Dudek, poet, critic, professor and literary activist (b at Montréal 6 Feb 1918; d at Montréal 22 March 2001). He was educated in Montréal and went to McGill (BA), where he wrote for the McGill Daily.

Michel (Mischa) Hirvy (b Hirschowitz). Pianist, teacher, b Warsaw, October 1900?, d Montreal 31 Dec 1966. He studied piano with Paul Lutzenko and graduated from the Stern Cons in Berlin. After further studies in Austria he lived 1928-39 in Paris, then in Portugal, and settled in Montreal in 1941.

David Alexander Colville, painter (born 24 Aug 1920 in Toronto, Ontario died 16 July 2013 in Wolfville, Nova Scotia). Alex Colville moved with his family to Amherst, NS, in 1929 and studied at Mount Allison (1938-42).

Fred Cogswell, poet, editor, translator (b at East Centreville, NB 8 Nov 1917; d at Vancouver, BC, 20 June 2004). In 1952 Cogswell joined the English department at the University of New Brunswick, where he had been educated, and remained there 3 decades.

Elyse Friedman, writer, screenwriter, poet (born at Toronto, ON, 1963). Elyse Friedman graduated from film studies at Sheridan College. She also studied writing at the Humber College School for Writers and screenwriting at the Canadian Film Centre.