Musician Victor Stephan Vogel, of Austrian-Hungarian descent, known as Vic Vogel, was born in Montreal on August 3, 1935, as the second son of first-generation immigrants Emilia Zuelt and Mathias Vogel, who was of gypsy origin. Vic Vogel grew up on Bullion Street in Montreal. His father played accordion, and especially violin. Vic learned to play piano at the age of 5, by watching his older brother Frank as he studied piano. Vic also taught himself to play trombone, tuba, and vibraphone as well as arranging. At twelve years old, he dropped out of school. He started performing in Montreal Jazz clubs, and by the late 1950s he was playing in numerous orchestras. In 1960 he conducted his first ensemble at the Montreal night club Chez Paree. He went on tour with the orchestra Les Doubles Six de Paris in 1961 and with a CBC band in 1966. From 1965 to 1982, he was part of the staff creating the emission “Femmes d’aujourd’hui” at Radio-Canada, and has been musical director for a number of variety shows. At CBC radio, he conducted his own bands, including the Vic Vogel Big Band, which was formed in 1968. During its 50 years existence, this band became an important part of Montreal’s jazz scene. Every year from 1980 to 2015, Vic Vogel performed at the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal. He composed and arranged the music for the opening ceremonies for the Man and his World world's fair Expo 67, the Olympic Games held in Montreal in 1976, the Canada Games in 1985, as well as for the 1981 and 1985 Grey Cup football game half-time shows. Vogel’s other compositions include musicals for the Théâtre des variétés, program themes for CBC-TV and CTV, and film soundtracks. He has also created arrangements for jazz soloists and symphony orchestras. Vic Vogel released his first piano solo album in May 1993. In 2010, Vogel was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by Concordia University. In June 2019, he received the Medal of the National Assembly.
Vic Vogel died in Montreal on September 16, 2019.
Kenneth S. Muer was born in 1898 and died in Montreal in 1981, at the age of 83. He was fond of music and collected sheet music.
Morris Kronick, mieux connu sous le nom de Maury Kaye, naît le 29 mars 1932 à Montréal et y meurt le 3 février 1983. Son père dirigeait un choeur et sa soeur jouait du piano. À six ans, il commence à apprendre le piano et de 1945 à 1949, il suit des leçons avec Arthur Letondal au Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, puis étudie à l'Université McGill. Il apprend la trompette par lui-même et joue aussi de la clarinette. Il est chef d'orchestre au cabaret montréalais El Morocco (1952-1959), et se consacre également à ses propres groupes (notamment chez Dunn's). Il est trompettiste avec les ensembles de Steve Garrick et Gilbert «Buck» Lacombe parmi d'autres. Il accompagne les chanteurs Tony Bennett, Pearl Bailey, Edith Piaf, Sammy Davis Jr., Joséphine Baker et Mel Tormé. Sa carrière, interrompue à cause de sa dépendance à l'héroïne, se partage entre Montréal et Toronto, où il se produit à la House of Hambourg et joue de la musique dans la pièce de Jack Gelber, The Connection (1960-1961). Il joue avec Ron Collier, avec des orchestres de studio et au Centre O'Keefe et accompagne des musiciens américains de passage au cabaret Bourbon Street (1968). À Montréal il dirige des groupes dans plusieurs clubs entre 1961 et 1963, notamment au Playboy Penthouse.De 1970 à 1974, il joue à Toronto. De retour à Montréal en 1975, il travaille avec le trompettiste Charles Ellison, la chanteuse Barbara Reney et plusieurs autres. On le voit entre autres au Rising Sun. Pianiste impétueux de style bebop et jouant du cor d'harmonie, il enregistre pour la Société Radio-Canada avec Ron Collier.
Giovanni Roco «Johnny» Reno naît le 11 mai 1917 à Montréal de parents originaires de la Sicile. Il apprend à jouer de la clarinette à l'âge 9 ans et suit des leçons privées avec Joseph Fiori. À l'âge de 14 ans, il apprend par lui-même successivement le saxophone alto et le saxophone ténor. Vers 16 ans, alors qu'il est toujours à l'école, il commence à jouer dans des salles de danse dans le quartier St-Henri. Il débute sa carrière à temps plein avec le pianiste Al Buckwald au Montreal Press Club en 1938. Au cours des années 1940, il dirige différents groupes de jazz, travaillant avec Jimmy Jones au Rockhead's Paradise (1944-1945) et avec Lloyd Duncan au Café St. Michel. Il joue premier saxophone alto et soliste pour différents orchestres, incluant ceux dirigés par Bix Bélair, Maynard Ferguson, Russ Meredith et Stan Wood. De 1952 à 1963, il dirige les quatuors qui se produisent au Café Montmartre. Pendant un an et demi il travaille avec Marcel Doré dans le spectacle que ce dernier présente au boîte de nuit le Casa Loma.Il joue ensuite de manière intermittente dans différentes boîtes avant de travailler dans le groupe de Joe Christie, accompagnant des danseuses au club Chez Paree (1973-1974). Au cours de sa carrière, il travaille également comme copiste de musique, professeur de musique, musicien de studio et compositeur.
Lawrence Sabbath naît le 25 mai 1915 et décède à Montréal le 29 juin 1993. Il étudie les humanités à l'Université Queen's et en droit à l'Université McGill. Il est un critique de théâtre et d'arts visuels pour le quotidien The Montreal Star (de 1957 à 1979), pour The Gazette(de 1979 à 1987), et également pour d'autres journaux et magazines comme le Toronto Star, le New York Times, le Saturday Night et le Vie des arts. Il est le premier critique anglophone à couvrir le théâtre francophone, portant ses succès à l'attention des lecteurs hors Québec et il fait connaître aux québécois les réalisations des compagnies et des comédiens francophones hors Québec. Il est le premier critique à reconnaître le talent énorme du dramaturge Michel Tremblay, dont les oeuvres sont censurées à cause de l'emploi de la langue vernaculaire. Au cours de sa carrière de journaliste, il donne des conférences sur les arts visuels et sur le théâtre à la télévision et à la radio, et des cours universitaires et dans des écoles secondaires. En 1990, il reçoit de la compagnie Imperial Oil le prix pour l'exellence en journalisme sur les arts.
Boyce Richardson, journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker, was born in Wyndham, New Zealand, March 21, 1928. He was married for 56 years to teacher and poet Shirley (Norton) Richardson (d. 2007). They had four children. Richardson died in Montreal, Quebec, on March 7, 2020 at the age of 92.
Richardson began work as a journalist in New Zealand, then moved to Australia. He travelled in India, then moved to Britain, where he studied writing. He immigrated to Canada in 1954 where he worked first for The Winnipeg Free Press, before hemoved to Montreal and joined The Montreal Star in 1957. He was the Star's correspondent in London from 1960 to 1968. He became a full-time freelancer in 1971, interested in particular in First Nation issues. He wrote for National Film Board films. In these and the book Strangers Devour the Land (1976), he chronicled the assault on the hunting way of life of the Cree Indians of Quebec.
He co-won a 1961 National Newspaper Award for a series of articles on Canada and the European Economic Community. His film Cree Hunter of Mistassini won the British Society for Film and Television Arts Flaherty Award in 1974 and a Melbourne Film Festival Special Award. Other awards include a Golden Apple at the 1990 U.S. National Educational Film and Video Festival and a 1990 Red Ribbon Award at the American Film and Video Festival for Super-Companies. He was invested a Member of the Order of Canada in 2002.
Donald Herbert Bell (known also as Don The Bookman Bell) was an author, dramatist, journalist-much of his writing was humorous-and a seller of used and rare books. He was born November 17, 1936 in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1941 his family moved to Montreal. His parents were Sam Bell and Claire Bell (d. 1983). The family name at the time of Don Bell's birth was Belitzky. His brother was Arthur Bell (1932-1984), who worked in publishing in New York and then became a writer at the Village Voice. His sister was Doreen Bell (married name: Resnick). Don Bell studied at Baron Byng High School and Mount Royal High School and then at McGill University, graduating in 1957 with a degree in commerce with an English major. He married Céline Dubé in 1962. They had two children, Daniel and Valerie, and later divorced. In the 1980s he married Odile Perret and divided his time between Paris and Sutton, Quebec. He died in Montreal March 6, 2003, age 67.
In the 1960s he had a number of jobs as a journalist, working for a time at CBC International Services and then at newspapers including the Montreal Herald, the Calgary Herald, and the Montreal Gazette. From 1967 onward, he worked as a freelance writer of articles, fiction (short stories and novellas), and film and radio scripts for a wide variety of Canadian and American magazines, newspapers, and other media. He did photography to illustrate his articles. He wrote the Expo publicity booklet short book Film at Expo 67 (published by Expo 67, 1967). A collection of his short stories was published as Saturday Night at the Bagel Factory and Other Montreal Stories (McClelland and Stewart, 1972). It won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Award for Humour for 1974. His book Pocketman was published by Dorset Publications in 1979. In 1976, he won the Canadian Authors Association Air Canada award for humour. In 1978 he won a Jewish Book Month award. 1n 1986 he won the Molson Silver Award for the Best Canadian Sports Writing category of the National Magazine Awards. For a number of years he researched the life and death of magician Harry Houdini, creating a manuscript for a book that was published posthumously as The Man Who Killed Houdini by Véhicule Press in 2004. He wrote a number of other books, usually compilations and reworkings of his articles and stories, that were never published.
In the 1980s he opened a second-hand bookstore in Sutton, Quebec. During his travels he scouted books and in the summers he sold books at his store, La Librairie Founde Bookes in Sutton. He had a column, Founde Bookes, in Books in Canada magazine, dealing with his life as a book scout and dealer. Bookspeak, a chapbook based on his experience scouting and selling used and rare books, was published by Typographeum in 2000.
Frank R. Chalk held the position of assistant professor of history at Sir George Williams University from 1965 to 1969. He was appointed associate professor of history in 1969. He continued to hold that position at Concordia University after it was formed with the merger of Sir George Williams University and Loyola College in 1974. Among other activities, he was a member of the Senate Library Committee in the 1970s and a member of the Intra-University History Committee.
- Frank Chalk was granted the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 for his contribution to the prevention of genocide.
Thomas McLaren, architect, was born in Perth, England, on July 22, 1879. He died in Montreal in 1967. He was a partner in the firm Peden and McLaren which designed the first Loyola College buildings on Sherbrooke St. West in the 1910s.
John Buell was born in Montreal July 31, 1927 and died on December 29, 2013. In 1952 he married Audrey Smith. They had four children: Katherine, Frank, Andrea, and Tony. John Buell attended St. Aloysius Grammar School, Catholic High School, and Loyola College from 1944-1950, graduating with a B.A. cum laude. He began teaching English at Loyola College in 1950. He obtained an M.A. (1954) and a Ph. D. (1961) in English Literature at Université de Montréal. In 1965-1966 John Buell joined the newly created Department of Communication Arts (later Communication Studies) at Loyola College and, after the 1974 merger of Loyola College with Sir George Williams University to form Concordia University, he remained at Concordia University until retiring in 1987.
John Buell began writing radio dramas around 1947 for the St. Genesius Players Guild (the Genesians) in Montreal. He wrote four novels as well as short plays and other pieces. From 1955 to 1965 he was editor of Unity, the newsletter of Montreal's Benedict Labre House. He directed plays for the Loyola College Dramatic Society. He published the following novels: The Pyx (1959), Four Days (1962), The Shrewsdale Exit (1972), Playground (1976), and A Lot To Make Up For (1990). His novels have been published in some 40 editions and seven languages. Hollywood produced a film in 1973 from his novel The Pyx. A Canadian company produced a film version of Four Days in 1998. The Shrewsdale Exit was made into a film in France in 1973 under the title L'Agression, starring Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Louis Trintignant.
Michael Marsden joined Sir George Williams in 1963 as part-time lecturer in geography. In 1965, he was appointed assistant professor of geography. He was appointed associate professor of geography in 1970, a position he held at Sir George Williams and, after its 1974 merger with Loyola College, at Concordia University, until 1995.
Henry J. Hemens was the first chancellor of Concordia University. Hemens entered Loyola College as a student in 1924 and graduated in 1932. He became a lawyer and was named Queen's Counsel. He was president of the Loyola Alumni Association from 1963 to 1965 and then he became a member of the Board of Governors of Loyola College. Elected to the Loyola Board of Trustees on March 14, 1974, Hemens was part of the ad hoc committee which negotiated the merger of Loyola College with Sir George Williams University to form Concordia University in 1974. Chancellor Emeritus Henry J. Hemens died on April 6, 1991.
Fred H. Knelman was born in Winnipeg on October 9, 1919 and died on November 8, 2006 in Victoria. He studied at McGill University, graduating with an M.A. in chemical engineering, and at London University, where he received a Ph. D. in chemical engineering. He was a teacher at Concordia University from 1968 to 1984, in the Science and Human Affairs Department and then in Interdisciplinary Studies. His teaching was mainly oriented to the relation between science and technology and social questions. He published many articles and books on energetics and environmental issues, including Nuclear Energy: The Unforgiving Technology (1976) and Reagan, God and the Bomb - From Myth to Policy in the Nuclear Arms Race (1985).
J. Gerald MacGuigan, S.J., was a teacher at Loyola College from ca. 1949 to 1964. He was associate dean of Arts in 1965-1966 and dean of Arts from 1966 to 1970.
Alfred Pinsky was born on March 31, 1921 and died on November 21, 1999. He joined Sir George Williams University in 1959 as a part-time lecturer in Fine Arts. In 1960, he became a full-time lecturer, and chair of the newly-created Department of Fine Arts. In 1962 he was appointed assistant professor of Fine Arts. In 1964, he was promoted to associate professor, and, in 1969, to professor. Sir George Williams merged with Loyola College in 1974 to form Concordia University, and Pinsky continued teaching at Concordia. He was Dean of Fine Arts from 1975 to 1980. His title changed to professor of Fine Arts (Painting and Drawing) in 1983, and again in 1987 to professor of Painting and Drawing. He retired in 1996.
Elizabeth Kirly Horwood was secretary to the chair of the Concordia University Department of Mechanical Engineering during the events which occurred August 24, 1992, the Fabrikant incident, during which she was injured. Ms. Horwood died on June 12, 2002.
Clifford Sparling joined Sir George Williams College in 1952 as assistant professor of mathematics. In 1956 he was appointed associate professor of mathematics. From 1965 to 1972, he occupied this position on a part-time basis. He died in 1983, at the age of 87.
Donald Tobin graduated from Loyola College in 1936. He was president of the Loyola Alumni Association 1949-1950.
Fraser F. Fulton was born in St. John, New Brunswick. He died February 4, 1977.
He attended Mount Allison University and then graduated from McGill University in 1928.
He had a military career, beginning as a lieutenant with the Royal Canadian Signal Corps. Extensive overseas assignments followed during which he rose to the rank of brigadier general and a posting as chief technical officer, Canadian Army Overseas. He later became vice-president, administration of Northern Electric Company Limited (later Nortel).
Fraser Fulton joined the Sir George Williams University Board of Governors in 1961. He was vice-chairman in 1962-1963 and chairman of the Board of Governors from 1963 to 1969. He was active in fund-raising for the Henry F. Hall Building. In 1965 he was also appointed chancellor of Sir George Williams University, a position he held until his resignation in 1971.
Jack Goodson was born February 7, 1920. He was a student at Sir George Williams College in the late 1930s-early 1940s. He was involved in college shows including Georgiantics and the T.N.T. Revue which were presented for local audiences and to entertain troops training near Montreal.
Virginia Nixon studied English Literature (B.A.) at Carleton University and Art History (M.A., Ph.D) at Concordia University. She was a lecturer in art history and music history in the Concordia University Liberal Arts College. She published numerous articles on the arts and art-related topics in newspapers such as The Montreal Gazette and in magazines such as Montreal Calendar Magazine, The Canadian Forum, Art Magazine and Vie des Arts. Virginia Nixon died in Montreal on December 9, 2015.
Walter Kent Sloan was born September 5, 1924. He joined Sir George Williams University in 1971 as an assistant professor of theatre arts. After the merger of Sir George Williams with Loyola College to form Concordia University in 1974, his title changed to assistant professor of fine arts. He was promoted to associate professor of fine arts in 1983, and became associate professor of theatre in 1987. In addition to teaching, Sloan was active as a set, costume, and props designer for numerous Canadian theatres. He died on November 9, 1991.
Clarence S. Bayne joined Sir George Williams University in 1966 as a lecturer in statistics after completing his Master and PhD at McGill University. From 1967 to 1969, he was a Lecturer in quantitative methods; in 1969 he was appointed Assistant Professor of quantitative methods. Following the merger of Sir George Williams and Loyola College to form Concordia University in 1974, he was appointed Associate Professor of quantitative methods. In 1987, he was made Associate Professor of decision sciences and management information systems. He received his Full Professor title in June 2001. He was the Director of the Diploma in Administration/Diploma in Sport Administration (DIA/DSA) program from 1991 to 2006 and served on many university committees, task forces and councils. Bayne’s research focuses on forecasting and sampling theory. He has been an advocate for the Black community in Montreal.
- Bayne sat on the committee to investigate the charges against Perry Anderson in December 1968. The biology professor had been charged with racism by the then-Principal of Sir George Williams University, D. B. Clarke. Bayne would resign publicly from the committee on January 22, 1969, citing the lack of guidelines and procedures of the committee and expressing concerns regarding the overall role of the University towards the Black community.
- Bayne was instrumental in the foundation of Montreal’s Black Theatre Workshop in 1969. He has been president and executive director of the company created to offer opportunities to black actors.
- Bayne was the founder and executive director of the National Black Coalition of Canada Research Institute during a leave from teaching in 1972.
- In 1987, Bayne worked on the creation of the Foundation for Minority Arts and Culture.
- Bayne was the 1992 recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award for his work on developing Black performing arts and culture in Montreal.
- In February 1996, the City of Montreal presented a community service award to Bayne.
- Bayne received the Montreal Association of Black Business and Professional Award in 1998.
- Bayne chaired a session on Multiple Identities and Social Values at the Canadian Cultural Research Network (CCRN) colloquium in Edmonton, held in May 2000.
- Bayne was admitted to the Beta Gamma Sigma Business Honour Society at its ceremony held November 1, 2000.
- Bayne received the Quebec Board of Black Educator’s Award in 2000.
Lewis Thomas Drummond was born in Londonderry, Ireland, May 28, 1813. When he was 12 years old, he and his widowed mother came to live in Montreal. He was educated at the Seminaire de Nicolet and studied law in the office of attorney Charles Dewey Day. Drummond was accepted to the Bar of Lower Canada in 1836 and established his own law firm. In 1838 he earned a reputation in criminal law when he defended those who participated in the Rebellion of 1837. Although he lost the case and the rebels were hanged, he gained much publicity and went on to try other prominent criminal cases.
In 1848 he was appointed Queen's Counsel, and that year he became solicitor general for Lower Canada in the first Canadian responsible government. In 1851 he was promoted to attorney general for Lower Canada. In 1852 he used his influence to overcome opposition within the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada to incorporate Montreal's Collège Ste-Marie. (One of Concordia University's founding institutions was Loyola College, which originated as a branch of Collège Ste-Marie.) Drummond successfully promoted legislation for the abolition of seigneurial tenure in Lower Canada (Quebec). The adoption of the Consolidated Seigneurial Act of 1854 is attributed to Drummond.
Drummond married a francophone, a member of a seignieurial family, Elmire Debartzch. They had two sons, Charles and Lewis Henry. (Lewis H. Drummond became a member of the Jesuit Order.) L.T. Drummond died from bronchitis on November 24, 1882.
Dorothy Davis was born in 1897. She married and had a son, Robert Stein. In 1937 she was the co-founder with Violet Walters of the Montreal Children's Theatre, a theatre and theatre school for children. They directed the theatre from 1933 to 1990. Dorothy Davis died on September 22, 1993.
Bill Vazan est né à Toronto en 1933. En tant qu'artiste, localisé à Montréal, il a travaillé pendant plusieurs années avec la photographie et le vidéo ainsi qu'avec la sculpture, surtout avec des roches.
Ses oeuvres sont exposées dans des galeries à travers le monde. Il était l'un des artistes de l'événement Corridart dans la rue Sherbrooke de 1976.
Desmond Adams, photographer, was born on November 14, 1922. He died in Montreal on November 25, 2007. He was the fourth of six children, all born in Montreal, to Caribbean immigrants, Edith Nanton of Nevis and Herman Adams of St. Kitts. He attended Royal Arthur Elementary School where he discovered his musical ear and learnt to play the accordion. He joined the Canadian army in 1939 and served two years overseas in England and continental Europe during World War II. He was discharged on November 19, 1946. During the late 1940s and the 1950s he performed with his accordion in many cafes in Montreal, and found work as a railroad porter for the Canadian Pacific Railways. While performing with Olga Spencer's Rainbow Revue, he met Jean Peters Gordon, one of the Revue dancers. They married in 1949 and had two sons, David Desmond and Rodney Gordon, now renamed Sur Rodney (Sur).
After being given his first camera, Desmond Adams left his work with the railroad and no longer worked as a musician. Photography became his ambition and he was successful with it. During the 1960s he separated from his wife Jean and divorced her a decade later. During his separation he moved into a Linton Street apartment in the area of Côte-des-Neiges where he lived for many years, and where he built his first darkroom, before moving to LaSalle in the 1980s where he bought his house.
He worked professionally as a freelance photographer and portraitist, and was part of many communities. He began by photographing scenery and then portraits, and eventually established himself as a photographer of events and weddings, while at the same time experimenting with his own distinctive photography. For a short period he experimented with producing and editing short videos recorded with his video camera, and also produced small editions of his poetry illustrated with tipped in reproductions of his photographs. As early as 1972 he began presenting his photographs in solo and group exhibitions, several of them hosted in his home studio. During the 1980s he was employed with the School Board and started a photography club at École secondaire Saint-Laurent, in St. Laurent during the mid 1980s, where he assisted with the photography for the school's yearbook. He retired in 1990.
John Gilmore est né à Montréal en 1951 et a grandi en banlieue, plus précisément à St-Eustache-sur-le-lac, devenu par la suite Cité des Deux-Montagnes. Gradué du CÉGEP de l'Université Sir George Williams en 1972, il étudia et devint par la suite journaliste à Bridgend au Pays de Galles de 1974 à 1976. Lors de son retour à Montréal, il travailla au journal The Gazette de 1977 à 1978 et il commença à prendre des leçons privées de saxophone.
En 1978, il devint étudiant à temps plein au programme de jazz à l'Université Concordia et il obtint un Baccalauréat en Beaux-arts (musique) en 1981. Durant cette période, il fut aussi l'animateur d'une émission sur le jazz sur Radio Centreville CINQ-FM et commença à faire de la recherche sur l'histoire du jazz à Montréal.
De 1981 à 1986, il fut rédacteur à la pige, en plus d'être pigiste, et enseigna aussi l'histoire du jazz pendant un an à Concordia tout en faisant la recherche et en rédigeant deux livres, grâce à une subvention du Conseil canadien des arts: Swinging in Paradise: The Story of Jazz in Montreal publié en 1988 et Who's Who of Jazz in Montreal: Ragtime to 1970, publié en 1989 par Véhicule Press à Montréal. Il a ensuite publié un article «Jazz Research in Canada: Issues and Directions» dans Ethnomusicology in Canada, dirigé par Robert Witmer (Toronto: Institute for Canadian Music, 1990). Swinging in Paradise fut traduit et publié en français sous le tire Une histoire du jazz à Montréal, par Lux Éditeur, Montréal, en 2009. L'édition française inclut des corrections, de nouvelles notes explicatives en bas de page, Une préface de Gilles Archambault (auteur et ancien chroniqueur de jazz à Radio-Canada), et une nouvelle postface par l'auteur.
From 1985 to 1991, John Gilmore fut journaliste à Radio-Canada Intenational, à Montréal, puis est déménagé dans l'ouest canadien où il vécut de 1991 à 2000, plus précisément à Canmore et Calgary, Alberta et ensuite à Vancouver, Colombie-Britannique. Durant cette période, il a travaillé à en tant qu'éditeur au Banff Centre, comme programmeur musical à CBC Radio à Calgary, en tant que rédacteur à la pige et également en tant que pigiste. Il a aussi enseigné l'anglais langue seconde en Angleterre (où il a obtenu un certificat d'enseignement à Cambridge) et au Brésil et, par la suite, à la University of British Columbia et au Vancouver Community College.
En 2000, il revint vivre à Montréal, où il a continué à travailler en tant que rédacteur à la pige et pigiste. Il fut chargé de cours pendant un an à l'Université Concordia et professeur à temps partiel à la division de l'éducation aux adultes de la Commission scolaire de Montréal. Il est devenu citoyen britannique (tout en maintenant sa citoyenneté canadienne) en 2010. Son roman poétique, Head of Man, a été publié par Reality Street (Royaume-Uni) en 2011.
Harry Hill was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1940. He died in Montreal on August 18, 2005, at age 64. He taught English at Concordia University for 30 years and was an actor who was a key figure in English-language theatre in Montreal through the 1980s and 1990s. He studied English at the University of Aberdeen and later at the University of Alberta. He came to Montreal in 1970 to teach at Loyola College, one of the founding institutions of Concordia University, where he started The Actor’s Company in 1972 as a credit program offered to students for practical drama activity. Beyond his dynamic teaching of poetry, drama, critical reading and Shakespeare, he also served for many years as coordinator of the English Composition program. He also developed the University Writing Test, which has been a requirement for every Concordia student since 1983. He retired from Concordia in 1999.
Hill had also a parallel career as an actor which continued in his retirement. His numerous credits at the Centaur Theatre included Dancing in Lughnasa, The Dresser and Taking Sides. He was equally comfortable on radio, stage, film and television and was also a published writer. His textbook, A Voice for the Theatre, includes interviews with John Gielgud, Douglas Campbell, and Geraldine Page and has become an indispensable actor’s manual.