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Alessia Caracciolo, singer, songwriter (born 11 July 1996 in Brampton, Ontario). Alessia Cara is a pop music singer-songwriter. She has sold more than 11 million records in the United States and more than 285,000 in Canada since debuting in 2015. She is perhaps best known for her songs “Here” and “Scars to Your Beautiful.” She was named the Breakthrough Artist of the Year at the 2016 Juno Awards and the Best New Artist at the 2018 Grammy Awards. Her debut album Know-It-All (2015) won the 2017 Juno Award for Pop Album of the Year. Her album The Pains of Growing (2018) earned her 2020 Juno Awards for Album of the Year, Pop Album of the Year and Songwriter of the Year. Cara has also won a SOCAN Award, two MTV Video Music Awards and three Canadian Radio Music Awards.

Ryan Thomas Gosling, actor, musician, producer, director (born 12 November 1980 in London, ON). Ryan Gosling started out as a child actor before giving a breakthrough performance in the Sundance-winning indie drama The Believer in 2001. He has since created, in the words of the New York Times’ Dennis Lim, “a whole gallery of sensitive, intelligent, anguished young men, often with hipster tendencies or dark sides.” An A-list Hollywood star, he has proven equally adept at comedy ( Lars and the Real Girl, Crazy, Stupid, Love., The Nice Guys, The Big Short), drama ­(The Notebook, Half Nelson, Blue Valentine, The Ides of March, First Man) and science fiction (Blade Runner 2049). He has received two Oscar nominations and won a Golden Globe in 2017 for his lead role in the musical La La Land.

William Ronald Reid, sculptor (born 12 January 1920 in Victoria, BC; died 13 March 1998 in Vancouver, BC). An internationally recognized Haida artist, Bill Reid is frequently credited with the revival and innovative resurgence of Northwest Coast Indigenous arts in the contemporary world. (See also Contemporary Indigenous Art in Canada.)

Daniel David Moses, playwright, poet (born on 18 February 1952 in Ohsweken, ON; died 13 July 2020 in ON). Daniel David Moses’s literary works often explored Indigenous issues, including the impacts of colonization. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2016 and was appointed professor emeritus at Queen’s University in 2019.

Eleanor Coerr, journalist, children’s author (born 29 May 1922 in Kamsack, SK; died 22 November 2010 in Princeton, New Jersey). An award-winning writer of children’s books, Eleanor Coerr is best known for Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (1977), the result of a childhood fascination with Japan and a reporting trip there in 1949. As the wife of a diplomat, Coerr spent many years abroad. Her travels inspired her writing, much of which focuses on historical figures and subjects from far-flung locales.

Margaret Alberta Corbett Ecker, journalist (born 1915 in Edmonton, AB; died 3 April 1965 in Ibiza, Spain). Margaret Ecker was an award-winning newspaper and magazine writer. She was the only woman to serve overseas as a war correspondent for the Canadian Press wire service during the Second World War. She was also the only woman present at Germany’s unconditional surrender in 1945. Ecker was made an officer of the Netherlands’ House of the Orange Order in 1947, making her the first Canadian woman to receive that honour.

Jann Arden Anne Richards, singer, songwriter, actor, broadcaster (born 27 March 1962 in Calgary, AB). Jann Arden is a multiple Juno Award-winning singer and songwriter. Her melancholy yet hopeful adult contemporary pop songs, distinguished by her expressive vocal delivery and introspective lyrics, earned her an international following in the 1990s and 2000s. Candid and down-to-earth, she has parlayed her salty sense of humour and affable, self-deprecating persona into a successful second career as a host, broadcaster and sitcom star. She is a member of the Order of Canada and Canada’s Walk of Fame. She was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2020.

Rachel Anne McAdams, actor (born 17 November 1978 in London, ON). Rachel McAdams is perhaps best known as a leading lady in such Hollywood romances as The Notebook (2004), The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009) and The Vow (2012). After graduating with a BFA from York University in 2001, she made a meteoric rise to stardom, going from a Gemini Award-winning role in the Canadian TV series Slings & Arrows (2003) to her breakthrough Hollywood performance in the hit high school comedy Mean Girls (2004). She was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2014 and received Screen Actors Guild and Oscar nominations for her supporting performance in the Oscar-winning Spotlight (2015).

Gordon Appelbe Smith, CM, OBC, painter, printmaker, teacher, philanthropist (born 18 June 1919 in East Brighton, England; died 18 January 2020 in West Vancouver, BC). Gordon Smith was a key figure in Vancouver’s art scene during the latter half of the 20th century. He was best known for his monumental, modernist abstractions of the West Coast landscape, and for his long and influential career as a teacher and philanthropist. He was made a Member of the Order of Canada for making “a major contribution to the development of the fine arts in Canada.” He also received the Order of British Columbia, the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, and the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Robertine Barry (pen name: Françoise), journalist, publisher, author and feminist (born 26 February 1863 in L’Isle-Verte, Canada East; died 7 January 1910 in Montréal, Québec). The first French-Canadian woman journalist, she was also a founding member of the Fédération nationale Saint-Jean-Baptiste and the first vice-president of the Canadian Women’s Press Club.

Stanley Allison Rogers, singer, songwriter (born 29 November 1949 in Hamilton, ON; died 2 June 1983 in Hebron, Kentucky). One of Canada’s finest singer-songwriters, Stan Rogers was known for his rich baritone voice and finely crafted folk songs, often written and performed in a traditional Celtic style. He is perhaps best known for the rousing a cappella anthem “Northwest Passage.” Concerned with themes of honour, loyalty and hope, Rogers drew on historic and poetic aspects of the Canadian experience. His music never received widespread radio airplay and was largely unknown outside of folk music circles during his lifetime. His legend grew after his tragic death in an airplane fire in 1983. He was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2019.

Don Domanski, poet and artist (born 1950 in Sydney, NS; died 7 September 2020). Don Domanski was an acclaimed Maritime poet who published nine books of poetry. He received the Governor General’s Award, the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award. He also served as the 2005 Ralph Gustafson Chair of Poetry at Malaspina University-College (now Vancouver Island University).

Rough Trade was a trailblazing, politically charged, punk-inspired New Wave rock band. It was formed in Toronto in 1975 by multi-instrumentalist Kevan Staples and Manchester-born, Scarborough-raised vocalist Carole Pope. Notorious for the openly sexual nature of their songs and the burlesque theatricality of their live performances — which often included bondage and sexual satire — the band was one of the first mainstream musical acts to include explicitly gay and lesbian references. They enjoyed critical and commercial success in the early 1980s and won four Juno Awards before disbanding in 1986. They are perhaps best known for the risqué, controversial hit single “High School Confidential,” which was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in September 2020.

Ron Hynes, singer, songwriter, guitarist, actor (born 7 December 1950 in St. John's, NL; died 19 November 2015 in St. John’s). One of Canada's most esteemed songwriters, Ron Hynes is often referred to as the “man of a thousand songs.” His debut solo album, Discovery (1972), was the first album of entirely original material by a Newfoundland artist. He is best known for the 1976 folk classic “Sonny’s Dream,” which has been covered by more than 200 artists, including Emmylou Harris, Stan Rogers and Great Big Sea. Hynes won a Genie Award and numerous East Coast Music Awards. He was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020.

Men Without Hats formed in 1977 amid the Montreal punk scene. They became pioneers of electro-pop in Canada after adopting a New Wave sound that made extensive use of keyboard and drum synthesizers. Their sound is characterized by infectiously simple melodies, socially and politically idealistic lyrics, and the distinctive baritone voice of lead singer, principle songwriter and chief member Ivan Doroschuk. The band enjoyed phenomenal success in the 1980s with the worldwide hits “Safety Dance” and “Pop Goes the World.” Both songs were inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in September 2020.