The Stratford Festival is a theatre festival which runs from April to October in the city of Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Founded by local journalist Tom Patterson in 1952, the festival was formerly known as the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, the Shakespeare Festival and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The festival was one of the first arts festivals in Canada and continues to be one of its most prominent. It is recognized worldwide for its productions of Shakespearean plays.
The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) is the Ontario provincial wing of the Communist Party of Canada. Using the name Labor-Progressive Party from 1943 until 1959, the group won two seats in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario: A.A. MacLeod and J.B. Salsberg were elected in the 1943 provincial election as "Labour" candidates but took their seats as members of the Labor-Progressive Party, which the banned Communist Party launched as its public face in a convention held on August 21 and 22, 1943, shortly after both the August 4 provincial election and the August 7 election of Communist Fred Rose to the House of Commons in a Montreal by-election.
Sir William Tyrone Guthrie was an English theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at his family's ancestral home, Annaghmakerrig, near Newbliss in County Monaghan, Ireland. He is famous for his original approach to Shakespearean and modern drama.
Martha Kathleen Henry was an American-born Canadian stage, film, and television actress. She was noted for her work at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario.
Alisa Palmer is a Canadian theatre director and playwright. She was the artistic director of Nightwood Theatre from 1993 to 2001. Palmer is currently the artistic director of the English section of the National Theatre School of Canada.
George McCowan was a Canadian film and television director in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Mervyn Alexander Clifford Blake, was a Canadian stage actor.
Gary Cowan is a Canadian golfer who has achieved outstanding results at the highest class in amateur competition.
Elliott Hayes was an aspiring Canadian playwright when he was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver.
Tony Nardi is an Italian-Canadian actor, playwright and theatre director based in Toronto, who has performed on stage and in film and television.
George Peel Gilmour B.A, M.A, Ph.D. was a Canadian university president. He was the youngest chancellor of McMaster University, serving from 1941 to 1949, then serving under the title of president and vice-chancellor until 1961. Gilmour Hall, the building containing the office of the president and the office of the registrar at McMaster University, is named after him.
The Festival Singers of Canada was a professional choir located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 1954-1979. Founded in 1954 by Elmer Iseler as the Festival Singers of Toronto, the choir was first heard on CBC radio in a 1955 Good Friday broadcast of Bach's Christ lag in Todesbanden. Initially consisting of only 25 voices, the choir expanded to 32 voices and attracted international attention for their work in the early 1960s with Igor Stravinsky. Their recording of Symphony of Psalms, conducted by Stravinsky, was nominated in 1965 for a Grammy Award. Tenor Gordon Wry was one of the founding singers of the chorus.
Mary Irene Patricia Jolliffe, C.M., was a Canadian theatre and performing arts publicist.
Quest is a Canadian entertainment and information anthology television series which aired on CBC Television from 1961 to 1964.
"A Shakespearean Baseball Game", subtitled "A Comedy of Errors, Hits and Runs", is a sketch by the Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster. First performed on television in 1958 and slightly revised in 1971 and 1977, the sketch depicts a fictional baseball game with the manager, players, and umpires all speaking in Shakespearean verse. The dialogue parodies lines from the plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Richard III while referencing modern baseball culture. It became Wayne and Shuster's signature sketch, and both its television and radio recordings have been preserved as significant works.
"Rinse the Blood Off My Toga" is a comedy sketch by the Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster. First broadcast on The Wayne and Shuster Hour on CBC Radio in 1954, it was reenacted for their British television debut in 1957 and their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. The sketch recasts the Shakespearean historical tragedy as a detective story with gangster overtones. Set in the Roman Senate right after the assassination of Julius Caesar, the script has Brutus (Shuster) engaging the services of private eye Flavius Maximus (Wayne) to identify Caesar's assassin. Several lines from the sketch became popular catchphrases, including Flavius's order of a "martinus" in a Roman bar, and the repeated lament of Caesar's widow Calpurnia in a thick Bronx accent, "I told him, 'Julie, don't go!' " It is considered Wayne and Shuster's most famous sketch.
The Stratford Film Festival was an annual film festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, which was staged from 1956 to 1961 and from 1971 to 1975. One of the first film festivals in North America ever to present international films, it was the preeminent film festival in the Southern Ontario region until the launch of the Festival of Festivals in 1976 resulted in a loss of arts funding and audience support that led the Stratford Film Festival to permanently cease operations that same year.
Donald Stuart McDiarmid was the Canadian men’s national tennis champion in 1940. In 1941, he was ranked the country’s number one men’s player by the Canadian Lawn Tennis Association. He held number one rankings in the Province of Ontario from 1939 to 1949. In 1946, he became the first Ottawa-born member of the Canada Davis Cup team. With his tennis career interrupted by the Second World War, McDiarmid enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and became a wartime overseas sports ambassador for his country.
Gisela Depkat is a German-born Canadian cellist and teacher. She has won multiple prizes at several international competitions and has performed with various Symphony Orchestras. Depkat has worked at the University of Texas at Austin, at Wilfrid Laurier University, McGill University and the University of Ottawa. She was principal cello of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra from 1981 to 1989 and was a private educator at a summer children's camp and worked for two music institutions in the mid-1980s.
Sheila Henig was a Canadian pianist and soprano. She performed as a soloist with the Halifax, Toronto and CBC Symphony Orchestras as well as the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Henig toured Canada as well as some European nations. She also appeared in concerts broadcast on radio and television by the CBC and was a panelist on the CBC Radio program Music and Opinion in 1973. A posthumous biography on Henig authored by her father and the freelance writer Madeline Thompson was published in 1982.
