September 1

1926: Playwright James Reaney was born in Easthope, near Stratford, Ontario.
He won three Governor General’s Literary Awards for drama: in 1949 for The Red Heart, in 1958 for A Suit of Nettles and in 1962 for Twelve Letters to a Small Town and The Kildeer and Other Plays.

September 2

1945: Novelist Victor-Lévy Beaulieu was born in Saint-Paul-de-la-Croix, Quebec. He won a Governor General’s Literary Award (French fiction) in 1974 for Don Quichotte de la démanche.

September 3

1995: Poet Earle Birney died in Toronto. He won two Governor General’s Literary Awards (poetry or drama): for David and Other Poems in 1942, and for Now is Time in 1945.

September 4

1895: Painter Antoine Plamondon died in Neuville, Quebec. He specialized in portraits of the bourgeoisie and copies of religious works.

September 5

2000: Soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian won First Prize in the international Operalia competition.

September 6

2000: Videographer and master story-teller Vera Frenkel received the Canada Council’s Bell Canada Award in Video Art.

September 8

1969: Painter Frederick Varley died in Toronto. Romantic and independent, he was known as the "gypsy" of the Group of Seven.

September 9

1959: Pianist Angela Cheng was born in Hong Kong, moving to Edmonton as a child. She often performs with her husband Alvin Chow and her brother Alan Cheng.

September 10

1924: Haida chief and master artist Charles Edenshaw died in Masset, British Columbia. His artistry and traditional knowledge first came to the attention of anthropologists and museum collectors in the 1890s. He worked in wood, argillite and precious metals.

September 11

1925: Composer Harry Somers, C.C., was born in Toronto. His music was performed around the world and he composed major scores for stage, concert hall, film, radio and television. He was a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers.

1934: Jazz pianist Oliver Jones, O.C., was born in Montreal. Trained exclusively in classical piano, he turned later to jazz, and played in the Festival international de jazz de Montréal every year from 1981 to 1999, opening and closing the festival seven times. He also toured widely in Canada, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.

September 13

1943: Novelist Michael Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In 1992 his novel The English Patient won the Governor General’s Literary Award (fiction) and shared the UK’s Booker Prize.

September 14

1985: The Calgary Centre for the Performing Arts opened with a gala performance featuring Brian Macdonald’s choreography for R. Murray Schafer’s composition The Garden of the Heart.

September 15

1901: Dance teacher and choreographer Gweneth Lloyd was born in Eccles, England. A co-founder of the Winnipeg Ballet Club in 1939, she helped transform it into the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

September 16

2005: English horn player Harry Freedman, O.C., died in Toronto. After 25 years (1946-71) playing with the Toronto Symphony, he turned to composition, writing , in addition to orchestral works, music for film, television and theatre. He received three commissions to write full-length scores for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

September 17

1939: Dancer and choreographer David Earle was born in Toronto. Co-founder of the Toronto Dance Theatre in 1968 and of the Dance theatre David Earle in Guelph, Ontario in 1996, he has choreographed over 130 works. In 2006 he won the Canada Council’s Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts.

September 18

1963: The Canada Council received a gift of $600,000 from the Molson Foundation to endow two annual prizes to persons who, through their work in the arts, humanities or social sciences, have enriched the cultural or intellectual heritage of the nation.

September 19

1976: The first full-scale retrospective exhibition of the work of Jack Bush opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

September 21

1934: Poet, novelist and singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, C.C., was born in Montreal. His reputation as a poet was made with the publication of The Spice Box of Earth (1961), as a novelist with The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966). He moved to the USA in 1967, and became acclaimed as a singer and songwriter.
1963: At the opening of the Grande Salle of Montreal’s Place des Arts the Montreal Symphony Orchestra performed Gustave Mahler’s First Symphony and a piece commissioned from Jean Papineau-Couture.
2006: Cellist Soo Bae and violinist Yi-Jia Susanne Hou took top honours in the Canada Council Musical Instrument Bank competition, winning the three-year loan of valuable fine-stringed instruments: the 1696 Bonjour Stradivari cello and the 1729 ex-Heath Guarneri del Gésu violin respectively.

September 22

1984: Jon Kimura Parker of Burnaby, B.C., won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in the UK in a televised performance.

September 23

1835: Thomas Chandler Haliburton first presented the character of Sam Slick in a series of sketches in the newspaper The Novascotian.

September 24

1904: William Goodridge Roberts was born in Barbados of a Canadian literary family and grew up in New Brunswick. A painter of landscape, figures and still life, he was an official war artist in England, 1943-45.

September 25

2000: Alexander Brott handed over the baton of the McGill Chamber Orchestra to his son, Boris Brott.

September 26

1946: Playwright John Gray was born in Ottawa. His celebrated play, Billy Bishop Goes to War, scrutinizes the ace pilot’s rise to heroic stature.

September 27

1924: Novelist Josef Skvorecky was born in Nachod, Czechoslovakia. He won the Governor General’s Literary Award (fiction) in 1984 for The Engineer of Human Souls.

September 28

1959: The National Ballet School opened in Toronto. Celia Franca was the founder and Betty Oliphant its founding principal.

September 29

1952: The CBC Symphony Orchestra made its broadcasting debut under Geoffrey Waddington, playing the overture to Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 3.

September 30

1944: Writer and soundpoet bpNichol was born in Vancouver. He won the Governor General’s Literary Award (poetry or drama) in 1970 for four separately published works: Still Water ((Talonbooks), The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid (Weed/Flower Press), Beach Head (Runcible Spoon Press) and The cosmic chef: an evening of concrete (Oberon Press).

2003: Tenor Ben Heppner delivered "a searing performance full of conviction and artistry" in the role of Tristan in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Tristan and Isolde in New York.