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Over the years, Urquhart has evolved a uniquely transcendent multi-media mode of expression, creating a visual poetry that goes beyond merely formalist concerns and embodies imagery of universal meaning and cross-cultural relevance.

Al (Alan Douglas) Neil. Pianist, composer, visual artist, author, b Vancouver 26 Mar 1924. He studied with Glenn Nelson and Jean Coulthard but, save for some lessons with Wilf Wylie, was self-taught as a jazz pianist.

Bell worked as a draftsman in a structural steel plant until 1967, when he turned his attention to being a full-time artist. He soon established himself for his talent in the graphic media including drypoint, etching, lithography, wood engraving and woodcutting.

Christopher Hinton, animator, writer (b at Galt [now Cambridge], Ont 1952). Christopher Hinton studied filmmaking at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont.

Alfred Laliberté, sculptor, painter, memorialist (b at Ste-Élisabeth de Warwick, Qué 19 May 1878; d at Montréal 13 Jan 1953). In 1896 he began studying modelling and design at the Conseil des arts et manufactures (CAM), Montréal.

André Lewis, dancer, teacher, artistic director (born at Gatineau, Qué). André Lewis has spent more than 35 years of his dance career with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School and Company (RWB).

Arlene Stamp, painter (b at London, Ont 4 June 1938). Stamp studied art at the Alberta College of Art and Design (1974-76) and the University of Calgary (BFA, 1979, and post-graduate studies from 1979-80). Previously she had studied mathematics at the University of Western Ontario (BA, 1960).

André Fauteux, sculptor (b at Dunnville, Ont 15 Mar 1946). He received his basic art education at Central Technical School in Toronto and worked with Anthony Caro (York University, 1974-75). Fauteux is known for the elegant, controlled line of drawing that characterizes his abstract sculptures.

Arthur Lipsett, filmmaker (born at Montréal 13 May 1936; died April 1986), worked at the National Film Board of Canada (1958- 70) where he was one of very few to make experimental films.

​Carl Beam (Carl Edward Migwans), artist (born 24 May 1943 in West Bay, Manitoulin Island, ON [now M’Chigeeng First Nation]; died 30 July 2005 in M’Chigeeng First Nation). The first contemporary Indigenous artist whose work was acquired by the National Gallery of Canada, Beam was one of Canada’s most ground-breaking Indigenous artists. (See also Contemporary Indigenous Art in Canada.)

Jackson Beardy (also known as Quincy Pickering Jackson Beardy), Oji-Cree artist (born 24 July 1944 at Island Lake, MB; died 8 December 1984 in Winnipeg, MB). Beardy was part of the Woodlands School of Indigenous art, and in 1973 he became part of a group of Indigenous artists popularly known as the Indian Group of Seven. His stylized artworks — sometimes painted on canvas, birch bark or beaver skins — were often concerned with the interdependence of humans and nature. They also tended to depict figures from Ojibwe and Cree oral traditions. From the late 1960s to his death in the early 1980s, Beardy promoted Indigenous art as a valid category of contemporary art. His influence as a Woodland artist has contributed to the development of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada.

Mary Matilda Hamilton (née Riter), artist (born 7 September c. 1867 in Teeswater, ON; died 5 April 1954 in Coquitlam, BC). Mary Riter Hamilton was a painter who exhibited her works in Europe and across Canada. Shortly after the fighting stopped, Hamilton travelled to Europe to paint First World War battlefield landscapes before they were cleared (see War Artists). She produced over 350 works in three years, which are a document of the destruction and devastation caused by the war.

Beverly Sainte-Marie, CC, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, social activist, philanthropist, visual artist (born 20 February 1941 on Piapot Reserve, SK). Buffy Sainte-Marie is a pioneering and influential singer-songwriter. She specializes in love songs and music with a political and social-activist focus. She was an important figure in the Greenwich Village and Toronto folk music revivals in the 1960s, and is perhaps best known for her 1964 anti-war anthem “Universal Soldier.” It was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005. Sainte-Marie also won a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and an Academy Award for co-writing the hit song “Up Where We Belong.” She has received the Polaris Music Prize and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, as well as multiple Juno Awards, Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, lifetime achievement awards and honorary degrees. A Companion of the Order of Canada, she has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame and Canada’s Walk of Fame.

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.)

Norval Morrisseau, artist (born 14 March 1932 in Sand Point Reserve, near Beardmore, ON; died 4 December 2007 in Toronto, ON). Morrisseau was a self-taught artist of Ojibwa ancestry (his Ojibwa name, which appears in syllabics on his paintings, means "Copper Thunderbird") who originated the pictographic style.

He worked for a Seventh Avenue dress manufacturer, as assistant designer, before moving to Toronto in 1972. After a brief time as a junior designer and freelance artist, Sung opened Moon, a small boutique in Toronto's prestigious Yorkville shopping district.

Alex Cameron, visual artist (born 1947 in Toronto, ON). Alex Cameron is broadly recognized as one of the most distinguished contemporary heirs of the Group of Seven, Jack Bush, and the Painters Eleven.

Blake Randolph Debassige, artist (born at West Bay, Ontario 22 June 1956).

Andy Thê-Anh, fashion designer (b at Saigon, Vietnam, 1965). Andy Thê-Anh moved to Québec at the young age of 16. Having lost both parents, Thê-Anh, with his grandparents and two sisters, resided with close family members in the francophone province for the majority of his youth.

​When I was 16, someone gave me a copy of an anthology of Canadian love poems called Love Where the Nights Are Long. In it were poems by Alden Nowlan, Leonard Cohen, Margaret Avison — and P.K. Page.