LAFAIVRE
LAFFIN
LAFLECHE
LAFORTUNE
LAFAIVRE o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-07-02 published
Robert Thomas
COULTER
In loving memory of Robert Thomas
COULTER who passed away Sunday Morning, June
29th ,2003 at the Sudbury Regional Hospital - Memorial Site at the age of 59 years.
Beloved husband of Lenna
(CASEY)
COULTER predeceased 1999. Cherished
son of Lloyd and Elsie
COULTER predeceased. Loving brother of Ernest
(wife Marilyn)
COULTER of Parry Sound, Mary
FRASER (husband Don
predeceased) of Falconbridge. Dear brother-in-law of Joan
LAFAIVRE
(husband Len) of Haileybury. Sadly missed by loving nieces and
nephews and their families. Funeral Service in the R. J. Barnard
Chapel, Jackson and Barnard Funeral Home, 233 Larch Street, Sudbury,
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003 at 1 pm. Friends may call after 12 noon on
Wednesday. Cremation at the Parklawn Crematorium.
also linked as linked as
LEFEBVRE
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LAFFIN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-11 published
COX,
Reverend
Michael
T., S.F.M.
Father Michael
COX died peacefully, on April 9, 2003, after a
lengthy battle with stomach cancer. He was the
son of the late
John Thomas
COX and Catherine Anne
MacKENZIE of Glace Bay, Nova
Scotia.
Born in Glace Bay, Father
COX attended St. Anthony's
Elementary and Saint Anne's High School, graduating in 1942. He
joined the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society in September 1944
and was ordained to the priesthood in December 1950. He was assigned
to mission in Japan in the summer of 1951 and worked there for
50 years, serving in various parishes. He returned to Canada
in 2001 to retire. Father
COX was the last surviving member of
his immediate family. He was predeceased by sisters Elizabeth
(who died in infancy,) Mary
LAFFIN, and Sister Martha
MARY, a
member of the Sisters of Charity; and by his brothers Joe, Neil,
George, and Father William, also a member of Scarboro Missions.
Father
Cox is survived by his sister-in-law Mrs. Kathleen
COX
of Glace Bay with whom he resided since January 2003, by several
nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews, and by members
of his Scarboro Missions community. The Mass of the Resurrection
will be celebrated Saturday, April 12, at St. Anthony's parish
in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. Father Cox will be buried beside his
parents at St. Anthony's Parish Cemetery. Memorial donations
can be made to Scarboro Missions or to a charity of your choice.
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LAFLECHE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-13 published
Singer was hit on Hit Parade
Canadian-born performer played violin with Jack Benny and posed
as wife of Sid Caesar
By James McCREADY
Special to The Globe and Mail Saturday, September
13, 2003 - Page F11
She was called "Canada's First Lady of Song." In the late 1940s,
singer Gisele
MacKENZIE was so popular on Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation radio that she was known just by her first name.
When she was 23, she headed off to Hollywood, where she became
one of the main singers on Your Hit Parade, a popular American
network television show in the 1950s. By the time television
started in Canada in 1952, she was already a star in the United
States, appearing on programs with Jack Benny and later with
Sid Caesar, the hottest comedian of his day.
Gisele MacKENZIE, who has died at the age of 76, was not always
known by that name. On the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
she was known simply as Gisele, though a 1950 Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation press release did call her by her proper name --
Gisele LAFLECHE. As soon as she moved to CBS in 1951, she adopted
the stage name Gisele
MacKENZIE.
The reason, she told a New York
reporter in 1955, was that the name Gisele
LAFLECHE "sounded
too much like a striptease artist's." The real explanation was
an American audience would have trouble with so French a name.
It was the television network that ordered the name change.
Marie
Marguerite
Louise Gisele
LAFLECHE was born on January 10,
1927, in Winnipeg. The name
MacKENZIE was from her paternal grandmother.
Her father, Georges, was a doctor, who played the violin, and
her mother, Marietta
MANSEAU, was a concert pianist and singer
as a young woman. Ms.
MacKENZIE started playing the violin seriously
when she was 7. She made her first public performance at the
Royal Alexandra Hotel in Winnipeg at the age of 12.
When she was 14, her family sent her to the Royal Conservatory
of Music in Toronto. She studied the violin and the piano, and
planned on being a concert violinist. Later in life, a story
circulated that she never took voice lessons, but Jim
GUTHRO,
who was at the conservatory at the same time, remembered a voice
teacher who took an interest in her. He also remembered that
she attended at the same time as Robert
GOULET and they would
sing together.
When she first came to Toronto, she stayed at Rosary Hall, a
residence for Catholic girls on Bloor Street at the top of Jarvis
Street. Tess
MALLOY, who was there at the same time, remembered
her. "She lived right across the hall from me. She and her girlfriend
used to drive us nuts practising the violin."
Ms. MALLOY didn't remember her singing at the residence, but
somewhere along the way someone discovered Ms.
MacKENZIE could
sing. It was close to the end of the war and she started to perform
for groups of servicemen. It was then that she was discovered
by musician Bob
SHUTTLEWORTH, a lieutenant who led a band for
the Royal Canadian Navy.
Right after the war, she started singing with Mr.
SHUTTLEWORTH's
band at the Glenmount Hotel on the Lake of Bays, north of Toronto.
Mr. SHUTTLEWORTH, who later became her manager and her husband,
took her to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which then
broadcast live popular music over the radio.
"Bob SHUTTLEWORTH called me at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
and said, 'Get a studio, a piano and a vocal mike. I have someone
I want you to hear,' recalled Jackie
RAE, then a music producer
at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, later leader of his
own band (and, incidentally, the uncle of former Ontario premier
Bob RAE.) "I remember her wonderful voice and how fresh she was.
We hired her straight away to do three programs a week."
The program was Meet Gisele, and it ran for 15 minutes on Monday,
Wednesday and Friday. The program started on October 8, 1946,
and lasted for four years. She was so popular the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation used her in other programs with names such as The
Girl Next Door or The Song Pluggers.
In 1951, Ms.
MacKENZIE was spotted by Bing
CROSBY's son, and
went to work in the United States for Bob
CROSBY's
Club 15, bumping
the Andrews Sisters from their regular slot. The pay was $20,000
(U.S.) a year, worth $150,000 in today's money. She was 23.
The money was something Canada could never match. Mr.
GUTHRO,
later head of Variety at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
guesses she was making $200 a week for her radio programs.
"Gisele Leaves for Hollywood. Canada's Loss," read a headline
in one Toronto paper. The article guessed at the pay package,
and it was right.
Ms. MacKENZIE was about to have her best decade ever in show
business. After a short stint on Club 15, she worked on the Mario
Lanza Show, before landing her full-time job at Your Hit Parade.
The idea behind the NBC program was to take the top seven songs
on the hit parade that week and have them done by the regular
singers in the Your Hit Parade troupe. The half-hour program
was a huge success in the United States and in late 1953 the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation picked it up for a while.
Ms. MacKENZIE was the only regular singer on the program to have
her own hit record, Hard to Get, in 1955.
Though none of her family shared her success, all were musical.
There were her parents, both of whom were serious amateur musicians
two of her sisters sang and played, and a brother played the
cello. Along with Gisele, two of them had what is called perfect
pitch.
"It's rare and she had it," Mr.
RAE said. "You would play four
notes on the piano and she could match them. Perfect pitch isn't
always a great thing, but in her case it was."
Ms. MacKENZIE's training as a classical violinist came in handy
on the Jack Benny program, on which she first appeared in 1955.
The droll comedian always made a thing of how he couldn't play
the violin. One vaudeville-type act they would do on his show
involved her patiently showing him what to do with a violin after
he made some awful screeching noise with his bow.
She was Jack Benny's protégé, and he helped land her own television
program in 1958. Called the Gisele
MacKENZIE
Show, it lasted
only six months.
But she remained famous. At one stage, she was the subject of
This is Your Life, which involved linking up with old Friends
and relatives. She was a regular on game shows that featured
minor celebrities, such as Hollywood Squares.
In 1963, she was cast as Sid Caesar's television wife and made
regular trips to New York City, where the program was done. Like
other television programs of that era, it was live, since videotape
was only just being introduced.
Ms. MacKENZIE also acted and sang in live musicals in the United
States, things such as Annie Get Your Gun and South Pacific.
Over the years, she also worked in Las Vegas, performing in night
clubs there. She returned to Canada for the occasional concert
and television special, including one on the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation in late 1960. It was about "her story book career"
and included the yarn, always told by her publicists, of how
she decided to take up singing after she lost her $3,000 violin.
By the end of the 1960s, the big work started to dry up and Canadian
newspapers were running the occasional "Where Are They Now" articles.
She was in a sprawling ranch house in suburban Encino, Calif.
She also owned property in Palmdale and Marin County, Calif.,
as well as a house on Lake Manitoba back home.
All that detail came up in a nasty divorce from Mr.
SHUTTLEWORTH
in 1968. Because he was also her manager, he kept 10 per cent
of her gross income for the next three years. She later married
a banker, Robert
KLEIN, but that also ended in divorce.
During the rest of her career, Ms.
MacKENZIE kept working in
regional theatre and made guest appearances on television series,
including MacGyver and Murder, She Wrote, as well as singing
stints on programs such as the Dean Martin Show. She also did
television commercials in the United States and Canada.
Ms. MacKENZIE had some odd hobbies. She collected and mixed exotic
perfumes and in the 1950s she took up target shooting, becoming
an expert shot. She and her first husband had a large collection
of pistols, rifles and shotguns. In her later years, like many
Hollywood stars, she was involved with Scientology.
Ms. MacKENZIE, who died in Burbank, Calif., on September 5, had
two children with Mr.
SHUTTLEWORTH, a son Mac and a daughter
Gigi (short for Gisele)
DOWNS.
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LAFORTUNE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-06 published
Linda STEARNS: 1937-2003
As ballet mistress and artistic director of the esteemed Montreal
company, she nurtured personality, flair and a risk-taking approach
to dance
By Paula CITRON
Wednesday,
August 6, 2003 - Page R5
In the cutthroat, competitive world of dance, Linda
STEARNS was
an anomaly. As artistic director of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens,
she never played games or held grudges. Whether good or bad news,
she bluntly told her dancers what they had to hear, and in return,
her open-door policy allowed them to vent their own feelings.
National
Ballet of Canada artistic director James
KUDELKA, who
spent almost a decade as a member of Les Grands Ballets, likens
her approach to wearing an invisible raincoat upon which unhappy
dancers spewed their venom. At the end of their tirades, she
would serenely remove the garment and say, "Now let's talk."
Linda STEARNS died at her home in Toronto on July 4, at age 65.
She was born into privilege on October 22, 1937. Her father,
Marshal, was an investment broker; her mother, Helen, was heavily
involved in charity work. The family lived in the posh Poplar
Plains area of central Toronto, where Ms.
STEARNS attended Branksome
Hall.
Despite their wealth, the
STEARNS children (Linda, Nora and Marshal)
were expected to earn their own livings. Helen
STEARNS had studied
dance in her youth, but a career was never an option. When eldest
daughter Linda showed a strong talent, history might have repeated
itself had not Marshal Sr. set aside his reservations after seeing
his daughter perform.
After graduating from high school, Ms.
STEARNS went to London
and New York for advanced training. It was the great Alexandra
Danilova, one of Ms.
STEARNS's
New
York teachers, who pointed
the young dancer in the direction of the upstart Les Grands Ballets
Canadiens. Ms.
STEARNS joined Les Grands in 1961, and was promoted
to soloist in 1964. In a Who's Who of Entertainment entry, Ms.
STEARNS was once listed as joining the company in 1861, and she
liked to joke that, at 103 years, she held the record for the
longest time spent in the corps de ballet. In fact, one of Ms.
STEARNS's hallmarks was her sense of humour, much of it at her
own expense.
Les Grands was known for taking dancers who did not necessarily
have perfect ballet bodies, but had personality and flair, a
policy Ms.
STEARNS continued during her own administration.
Although Ms.
STEARNS had very unballetic, low-arched feet, she
was a fine classical dancer. She excelled, however, in the dramatic
repertoire: Mother Courage in Richard Kuch's The Brood, or the
title role in Brydon Paige's Medea. In later years, while teaching
and coaching, Ms.
STEARNS wore high heels to conceal her hated
low arches -- while showing off her attractive ankles.
Her performing career was cut short in 1966 when artistic director
Ludmilla CHIRIAEFF recognized that Ms.
STEARNS would make a brilliant
ballet mistress, and by 1969, Ms.
STEARNS was exclusively in
the studio. In fact, giving up performing was one of the great
disappointments of her life, although she did in time acknowledge
that she had found her true destiny. Ms.
STEARNS's astonishingly
keen eye allowed her to single out, in a corps de ballet of moving
bodies, every limb that was out of position. She could also sing
every piece of music, which saved a lot of time, because she
didn't have to keep putting on the tape recorder. Because of
her intense musicality, Ms.
STEARNS also insisted that the dancers
not just be on the count, but fill every note with movement.
Ms. STEARNS loved playing with words -- she was a crossword-puzzle
addict, for example -- and gave the dancers nicknames, whether
they liked them or not. Catherine
LAFORTUNE was Katrink, Kathy
BIEVER was Little Frog, Rosemary
NEVILLE was Rosie Posie, Betsy
BARON was Boops, and Benjamin
HATCHER was Benjamino, to name
but a few. One who escaped this fate was Gioconda
BARBUTO, simply
because Ms.
STEARNS loved rolling out the word "G-I-O-C-O-N-D-A"
in its full Italian glory. The dancers, in turn, called her Lulubelle,
Mme. Gozonga and
La Stearnova or, if they were feeling tired,
cranky and hostile -- and were out of earshot -- Spoons (for
her non-arched feet) and even less flattering names. As reluctantly
as she became ballet mistress, Ms.
STEARNS became artistic director,
first as one of a triumvirate in 1978 with Danny
JACKSON and
Colin McINTYRE (when Les Grands and Brian
MacDONALD came to an
abrupt parting of the ways;) then with Jeanne
RENAUD in 1985
and finally on her own in 1987. She retired from Les Grands in
1989. Both Mr.
JACKSON and Mr.
McINTRYE still refer to Ms.
STEARNS
as the company's backbone.
These were the famous creative years that included the works
of Mr. KUDELKA, Paul Taylor, Lar Lubovitch, Nacho Duato and George
Balanchine. Les Grands toured the world performing one of the
most exciting and eclectic repertoires in ballet. It was a company
that nurtured dancers and choreographers, many of whom reflected
Ms. STEARNS's risk-taking, innovative esthetic.
She also had time to mentor choreographers outside the company,
including acclaimed solo artist Margie
GILLIS.
Her post-Grands
career included writing assessments for the Canada Council, setting
works on ballet companies, coaching figure skating, and most
recently, becoming ballet mistress for the Toronto-based Ballet
Jörgen. When she was diagnosed with both ovarian and breast cancer
two years ago, she continued her obligations to Ballet Jörgen
until she was no longer able, never letting the dancers know
how ill she was.
Ms. STEARNS loved huge dogs -- or what Ms.
GILLIS refers to as
mountains with fur -- and always had at least two. Her gardens
were magnificent, as was her cooking. Her generosity was legendary,
whether inviting 20 people for Christmas dinner, or hosting the
wedding reception for dancers Andrea
BOARDMAN and Jean-Hugues
ROCHETTE at her tastefully decorated Westmount home. After leaving
Montreal, whether, first, at her horse farm in Harrow, Ontario,
or at the one-room schoolhouse she lovingly renovated near Campbellville,
northwest of Toronto, former colleagues were always welcome.
She continued to keep in touch with her dancers, sending notes
in her beautiful, distinctive handwriting. Her love of sports
never left her, and after a hard day in the studio, she would
relax watching the hockey game. Religion also filled her postdance
life, with Toronto's Anglican Grace-Church-on-the-Hill at its
epicentre. Ms.
STEARNS was very discreet in her private life,
although another disappointment is that neither of two long relationships
resulted in marriage or children.
Ms. STEARNS was always ruthlessly self-critical, always striving
for perfection, never convinced she had rehearsed a work to its
full potential. As a result, she never made herself the centre
of her own story. Her homes, for example, did not contain photographs
glorifying the career of Linda
STEARNS.
Only at the end of her
days, as she faced death with the same grace with which she had
faced life, was she finally able to appreciate how many lives
she had touched, and accept her outstanding achievements with
Les
Grands
Ballets. Linde
HOWE-
BECK, former dance critic for
the Montreal Gazette, sums up Ms.
STEARNS perfectly when she
says that she was all about love -- for her Friends and family,
for life, but most of all, for dance.
Paula CITRON is dance critic for The Globe and Mail.
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