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Article

Acadian Folklore Studies

​For a long time, there was little awareness of or research into the Acadians’ rich folklore. However, in the late 1930s and the 1940s, pioneers such as Joseph-Thomas LeBlanc and Father Anselme Chiasson began to promote the spread of Acadia’s repertoire of songs and oral traditions. Later, during the 1950s, Luc Lacourcière and his followers at Université Laval’s Archives de folklore gathered substantial collections of tales, legends and songs. Up to the 1990s, extensive research was undertaken throughout Acadia.

Article

Degrassi

The Degrassi franchise — consisting of five separate but interrelated TV series, several TV movies and a webseries of shorts — about Toronto youths and their realistic high school experiences, is Canada’s longest-running dramatic series. It has aired off and on for over 35 years, spanning more than 500 episodes. Praised by many as the most successful example of television franchising in Canadian history, Degrassi is licenced in over 140 countries and has launched the careers of several Canadian talents, most notably Drake. The show has received four Primetime Emmy nominations, two International Emmy Awards, 25 Gemini Awards, 16 Canadian Screen Awards and a Peabody Award.

Article

Film Distribution in Canada

Film distribution is one of the three main branches of the film industry. It provides the link between film production and exhibition. It is also the most profitable of the three sectors and is dominated by large multinational conglomerates. Film distribution companies supply movies, television programs, videos and new media to outlets such as cinemas and broadcasters. They do so in territories where they have acquired rights from the producers. Traditionally, distribution companies are the prime source for financing new productions. The distribution sector has been called “the invisible art.” Its practices tend to only concern industry insiders and go unnoticed by audiences. American companies dominate film distribution in Canada. They have controlled access to Canadian screens since the 1920s. (See also: Canadian Film History: 1896 to 1938.)

Article

Jazz in Canada

Combining elements of European and African traditions, jazz is a style of music that originated with African Americans in the early 20th century. It is characterized by its improvisatory nature, rhythmic vitality (i.e., “swing”) and emotional expressiveness. Because jazz predates its earliest documented evidence (i.e., recordings), some controversy surrounds its origins. According to generally accepted theory, however, jazz can be traced to the socio-musical environment of New Orleans at the dawn of the 20th century.

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Visual Art

Parallels and Contrasts in the Visual Arts and Music: A comparative study of the development of the two sister arts in Canada had not been published, although Maria Tippett's Making Culture (Toronto 1990) reviews broad trends in anglophone Canada from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.

Article

Choral composition

Choral composition. From colonial days to the early years of the 21st century, Canadian composers have written works for performance by choirs. Canadian choral contributions include sacred and secular compositions in all categories.

Article

Winnie-the-Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh is a popular character in children’s books, movies and TV series. Originally appearing in Winnie-the-Pooh, a children’s book written by author A.A. Milne in 1926, the fictional character was based on a female black bear found in White River, Ontario. The bear, also called Winnie, was resident at the London Zoo, where she had been donated by Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian in the Canadian Army during the First World War.

Article

Caribbean Music in Canada

Caribbean music is an important component of musical life in Canada on two grounds: firstly, significant numbers of Caribbean peoples have immigrated to Canada, particularly beginning in the 1960s, and have continued the musical traditions of their homelands in the new environment; and secondly as early as the 1920s successive styles of Caribbean-derived music began to form part of the fabric of Euro-American pop music and thus part of the musical experience of many Canadians over the years.

Article

Casavant Frères

 Casavant Frères is the most important and illustrious organ-building firm in Canada. It was founded in St-Hyacinthe, Qué, in 1879 by the brothers Joseph-Claver (b 1855, d 1933) and Samuel-Marie (b 1859, d 1929) Casavant.

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Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal

Founded in 1958 by Ludmilla Chiriaeff, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal is the most progressive and experimental of Canada’s three big ballet troupes (the National Ballet of Canada and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet being the other two). It is noted for a diverse repertoire that has emphasized new works as well as traditional 19th-century story-ballets and 20th-century classics. The company has also had a strong record of commissioning original works that are often choreographed, composed and designed by Canadians (see also Dance in Canada).

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Indigenous Oral Histories and Primary Sources

Oral histories play an integral role in Indigenous cultures. They transmit important histories, stories and teachings to new generations. Oral histories — a type of primary source — let Indigenous peoples teach about their own cultures in their own words. Other types of primary sources, such as artifacts from historical Indigenous communities, also transmit knowledge about Indigenous histories and ways of life. Academics, researchers and museum curators use such sources to highlight Indigenous perspectives.

Article

Art Illustration

 The earliest printed image relating to Canada is a bird's-eye view of Hochelaga and environs, published by Giovanni Ramusio in Venice in 1556.

Editorial

Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art

The Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art is located in downtown Toronto. It was designed by Bruce Kuwabara and his team at KPMB Architects. Approaching the museum, one encounters an elevated cube cantilevered towards Queen’s Park. Its fritted-glass windows are set back from the building’s elegant limestone facade. The building is a dramatic extension of the modest original. The original building was a stately, two-storey neoclassical modernist structure designed by Keith Wagland. (He was one of Kuwabara’s professors at the University of Toronto.) It was completed in 1984.

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Folklore

Folklore was first introduced as a term in England in 1846 and today refers to information, wisdom and human expression that is passed on, usually anonymously, from generation to generation or transmitted and circulated as traditional cultural behaviour.

Article

Documenting the First World War

The First World War forever changed Canada. Some 630,000 Canadians enlisted from a nation of not yet eight million. More than 66,000 were killed. As the casualties mounted on the Western Front, an expatriate Canadian, Sir Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook), organized a program to document Canada’s war effort through art, photography and film. This collection of war art, made both in an official capacity and by soldiers themselves, was another method of forging a legacy of Canada’s war effort.

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Nobel Prizes and Canada

The Nobel Prizes are awarded annually for achievements that have significantly benefitted humankind. The prizes are among the highest international honours and are awarded in six categories: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace, and economics. They are administered by the Nobel Foundation and awarded by institutions in Sweden and Norway. Eighteen Canadians have won Nobel Prizes, excluding Canadian-born individuals who gave up their citizenship and members of organizations that have won the peace prize.

Article

Authors and Their Milieu

Contemporary Canadian writers have won prestigious awards and honours at home and abroad. Among the most publicized of these events was Prix Goncourt awarded to Antonine Maillet for Pélagie-la-Charette.