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Tatiana Gabrielle Maslany, actor (born 22 September 1985 in Regina, Saskatchewan). Versatile film and television actor Tatiana Maslany is perhaps best known for her multiple performances as various clones in the hit sci-fi series Orphan Black (2013–17). In 2016, she became the first Canadian actor to win a Primetime Emmy Award for a Canadian television series. She has also won five Canadian Screen Awards, two Gemini Awards, two ACTRA Awards and numerous other honours.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, OBE, writer (born 30 November 1874 in Clifton (now New London), PEI; died 24 April 1942 in Toronto, ON). Lucy Maud Montgomery is arguably Canada’s most widely read author. Her first novel, Anne of Green Gables (1908), became an instant best-seller. It has remained in print for more than a century, making the character of Anne Shirley a mythic icon of Canadian culture. Montgomery produced more than 500 short stories, 21 novels, two poetry collections, and numerous journal and essay anthologies. Her body of work has sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide. Anne of Green Gables alone has been translated into at least 36 languages as well as braille. It has been adapted dozens of times in various mediums. Montgomery was named an Officer of both the Order of the British Empire and the Literary and Artistic Institute of France. She was the first Canadian woman to be made a member of the British Royal Society of Arts and she was declared a Person of National Historic Significance in Canada.

Charles Thomas "Stompin’ Tom" Connors, OC, singer, songwriter, guitarist, fiddler (born 9 February 1936 in Saint John, NB; died 6 March 2013 in Ballinafad, ON). One of the most iconic figures in Canadian music, Stompin’ Tom Connors was a working-class, salt-of-the-earth troubadour and perhaps the most overtly nationalist songwriter Canada has ever produced. His traditional country songs about Canadian people and places — such as “Bud the Spud,” “Sudbury Saturday Night” and “Big Joe Mufferaw” — were humorous, patriotic and widely popular, and reflected his extensive travels throughout the country. He was a passionate activist for Canadian music and culture, going so far as to return six Juno Awards in protest of what he saw as the organization’s favouring of expatriate Canadians over those with only domestic success. He received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the East Coast Music Awards, the Toronto Musician’s Union and SOCAN. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.

Kathleen (Kay) Livingstone (née Jenkins), organizer and activist, broadcaster, actor (born 13 October 1919 in London, ON; died 25 July 1975). Kay Livingstone founded the Canadian Negro Women’s Association in 1951 and organized the first National Congress of Black Women in 1973. An established radio broadcaster and actor, Livingstone also devoted a great deal of her life and energy to social activism and organizing. Her tireless work to encourage a national discussion around the position of racialized people in society, particularly Black women, led Livingstone to coin the term visible minority in 1975.

Shyam Selvadurai's first novel, Funny Boy won the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and The Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Men's Fiction. The novel is at once innocent and wise, fanciful and uncompromisingly frank in its depiction of Arjie Chelvaratnam's happy and harrowing childhood.

Clement Virgo, director, producer, writer (b at Montego Bay, Jamaica 1 June 1966). Clement Virgo came with his family to Canada in 1977 and attended West Preparatory Public School in north Toronto before the family moved to Regent Park, the city's largest public-housing estate, known for its troubles with drugs and crime.

​Sandra Brewster, visual artist (born in 1973 in Toronto, ON).

Dionne Brand, CM, FRSC, poet, writer, filmmaker, educator, activist (born 7 January 1953 in Guayaguayare, Trinidad). Dionne Brand is one of Canada’s most accomplished poets. She is known for her experimental poetry, which challenges assumptions of gender identity, sexuality and race. She has published books, contributed to anthologies, and directed and edited several documentaries for the National Film Board. She has also held various positions teaching literature, creative writing and women’s studies at universities across Canada and the United States. Winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a former poet laureate of Toronto, Brand was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2017 for her contributions to Canadian literature.

Afua (Ava Pamela) Cooper, educator, historian, performance artist, poet (born 8 November 1957 in the Whithorn district of Westmoreland, Jamaica), is considered one of the most influential and pioneering voices in the Canadian dub poetry and spoken word movement. Her poems are published in numerous regional, national and international journals and anthologies. Afua Cooper also has CDs of her performances that make her work well known to the global community. In addition to her renown as a performance artist, she is an internationally-ranked historian. She has taught Caribbean cultural studies, history, women's studies and Black studies at Ryerson and York universities, at the University of Toronto and at Dalhousie University.

Several common traits - particularly the wish to preserve the culture and language of the country of origin and to instil a sense of community ties - can be found as the driving motivation behind any theatre group formed within a recent immigrant community.

Jean-Marc Vallée, director, screenwriter, editor, producer (born 9 March 1963 in Montreal, QC; died 25 December 2021 in Berthier-sur-Mer, QC). Québécois filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée was one of Canada’s most honoured filmmakers. A skillful craftsman with a knack for slick sentimentality and dramatic intensity, he was renowned for his ability to draw authentic, heartfelt performances from actors. He is best known for films about lost or damaged souls trying to find or heal themselves, such as the multiple-Genie Award-winning C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) — widely considered one of the best Canadian films ever made — the Hollywood dramas Dallas Buyers Club (2013), Wild (2014) and Demolition (2015), and the HBO series Big Little Lies (2017–19) and Sharp Objects (2018). Vallée won multiple Genie Awards and Prix Iris, two Emmy Awards, a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award and numerous international accolades.

Yann Martel, CC, novelist, short-story writer (born 25 June 1963 in Salamanca, Spain). A francophone who writes in English, Yann Martel is best known for the international bestseller Life of Pi (2001). It won the prestigious Man Booker Prize and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name. Martel has also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and a Coventry Inspiration Book Award. He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2021.

Jackie Richardson, actor, singer (born 1947 in Donora, Pennsylvania). Jackie Richardson is an award-winning singer and actor whose career spans more than five decades. She has been called Canada’s reigning queen of jazz, blues and gospel, and has received a Maple Blues Award for lifetime achievement. She is also a Gemini Award and Dora Award-winning actor who has appeared in numerous musical theatre productions, films and television series. In 2014, the Toronto Star named Richardson one of 180 people who have helped shaped the city since it was founded. She was made an Honorary Member of the Order of Canada in 2021.

Joyce Hahn, singer, TV host (born 31 January 1929 in Eatonia, SK; died 13 December 2021 in Sparks, Nevada). As a child, Hahn performed from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s with The Harmony Kids, a family troupe formed by her father, Harvey, and including her brothers Bob and Lloyd and sister Kay.

Keanu Charles Reeves, actor, producer, director, musician (born 2 September 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon). Keanu Reeves is one of the most recognizable film actors in the world. After early work in Toronto with the CBC and the NFB, he moved to Los Angeles and made a meteoric rise to stardom in such films as Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), Point Break (1991) and My Own Private Idaho (1991). He is perhaps best known for action-adventure movies such as Speed (1994), the John Wick franchise and the four Matrix movies. He has been honoured with a star on both the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Canada’s Walk of Fame.

Bruce Douglas Cockburn, OC, singer, songwriter, guitarist, activist (born 27 May 1945 in Ottawa, ON). Bruce Cockburn is one of Canada’s preeminent singer-songwriters, guitarists and social-justice activists. His music blends folk, rock, pop and jazz, and typically addresses spiritual themes and global issues from a politically charged perspective. He has had 17 albums certified gold in Canada and three certified platinum, and has sold more than seven million copies worldwide. The winner of 11 Juno Awards from 31 nominations, he has also received the inaugural Allan Waters Humanitarian Award and the Allan Slaight Humanitarian Spirit Award. He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and Canada's Walk of Fame. Recognized as “a latter-day wandering minstrel whose songs reflect the discontents of modern society,” he received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awardfor Lifetime Artistic Achievement, and was made a Member (1982) and Officer (2002) of the Order of Canada.

Alain Simard, OC, COQ impresario, talent manager, producer, businessman (born 19 January 1950 in Montreal, QC). Alain Simard has been a leading figure in Quebec’s entertainment sector since the early 1970s. He is responsible for the conception and founding of some of Canada’s biggest annual festivals, including the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (FIJM) and the FrancoFolies de Montréal, one of the largest French-language music festivals in the world. Simard is also chairman of the board of Équipe Spectra, which manages and operates festivals and performance venues, mounts stage productions, runs a record label and manages artists. In 2003, Simard was named the most influential person in the cultural world by the Montreal newspaper La Presse. He is a Chevalier of France’s Arts et des Lettres, of the Ordre de la Pléiade, and of the Ordre national du Québec; as well as an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Jully Ann Inderia Gordon, singer, songwriter, actor, TV personality (born 8 November 1977 in Toronto, ON). Jully Black is known as “Canada’s Queen of R&B.” In 2013, CBC Music named her one of the 25 Greatest Canadian Singers Ever. Her rich and soulful alto voice has drawn comparisons to Tina Turner and Amy Winehouse. She has won a Juno Award from 10 nominations and has written songs for Destiny’s Child, Nas, Sean Paul and Missy Elliott, among others. She also started her own recording, management and publishing company, and her own fitness enterprise. Black has appeared onstage in productions of trey anthony’s play Da Kink in My Hair and Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s musical Caroline, or Change; the latter earned Black a 2020 Dora Award. She is also a popular television and radio host and panel guest. She was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2021.

Antonio Alfredo Bradanovich, teacher, guitarist, arranger (born 6 October 1913 in Ladner, BC; date of death unknown). Tony Bradan was a Yugoslavian Canadian guitarist who played with Mart Kenney's Western Gentlemen and several CBC Radio orchestras. He also had a distinguished and influential career as a guitar teacher and has been called “the father of modern guitar styles in Canada.” His pupils included Ed Bickert, Rob Piltch and Kim Mitchell.