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Gordon Pinsent, Canadian acting icon, dead at 92 – CBC.ca
Gordon Pinsent, one of Canada’s most prolific and iconic actors, has died. He was 92.
“Gordon Pinsent’s daughters Leah and Beverly, and his son Barry, would like to announce the passing of their father peacefully in sleep today with his family at his side,” said a note released late Saturday, written on behalf of Pinsent’s family by his son-in-law, actor Peter Keleghan.
“Gordon passionately loved this country and its people, purpose, and culture to his last breath.”
The Grand Falls, N.L., native and Canadian household name had a storied acting career spanning dozens of films and TV projects over six decades, including Due South, The Red Green Show, Babar and the Adventures of Badou, The Grand Seduction and The Shipping News.
Focusing on CBC programs alone, one could add The Forest Rangers, Quentin Durgens, M.P., the original Street Legal and Republic of Doyle, among others.
In the U.S., where he lived in Los Angeles for six years, it was such TV series and movies as It Takes A Thief, Silence of the North, Young Prosecutors, Banacek, and the feature film The Thomas Crown Affair.
“My whole career has depended on the happiness that I get when asked to do something,” Pinsent said in a 2010 Toronto Life interview. “Pick up the phone and say ‘yes.’ I do that a lot.”
Comedian and actor Mark Critch, a fellow Newfoundlander, said he will miss Pinsent as a mentor, friend, hero and “giant colossus of Canadian entertainment.”
Actors in Canada are following “on a path that [Pinsent] cut through a forest,” Critch said.
My pal Gordon Pinsent passed. I saw him a few weeks ago, his twinkle as bright as ever. I looked up to him as the Rowdyman but loved him as Porky Pinsent from Grand Falls. He cut the path the rest of us travelled. A household name based on Canadian work. The best there ever was <a href=”https://t.co/1s9yoE9Wml”>pic.twitter.com/1s9yoE9Wml</a>
—@markcritch
Born on July 12, 1930, Pinsent was the youngest of six children born to Stephen Pinsent, a paper mill worker and cobbler, and his wife, Flossie.
Pinsent said he was a shy, awkward child who once suffered from rickets but found freedom in acting, starting in the 1940s at the age of 17.
In the early 1950s, Pinsent took a break from acting and joined the Canadian Army, serving for about four years. But acting was his true love.
More than 150 roles
Pinsent joined the Stratford Festival in 1962 with roles in Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest and Cyrano de Bergerac, and he returned to Stratford in the mid-’70s as a leading player.
He had more than 150 TV and movie acting credits to his name, with his Internet Movie Database resumé spanning from a 1957 TV movie to a cartoon voice in 2021.
A companion of the Order of Canada and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Pinsent also received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, the Earle Grey Award for lifetime achievement in television, and a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame.
He won every major acting prize in the country, including the Genie for best actor in 2001’s The Shipping News, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Annie Proulx.
Five years later, Pinsent won best actor Genie and ACTRA awards for his internationally recognized work in Sarah Polley’s Away From Her.
Canadian acting legend Gordan Pinsent, whose award-winning career spanned six decades, has died at 92. His friend, fellow actor and comedian Mark Critch said Pinsent was thoughtful, young-spirited and deeply loved by his fans and peers.
‘Extraordinary’ performance
In the 2016 documentary about his life, The River of My Dreams — a film where a reflective, sometimes impish Pinsent speaks in eloquent paragraphs infused with his Newfoundland accent — he says his wife, the actress Charmion King, suggested he take the role, which turned out to be the high-water mark for his career.
Canadian director Norman Jewison said in the same doc that Pinsent’s performance in Away From Her of a man losing his wife (Julie Christie) to Alzheimer’s disease was “extraordinary.”
“It was so simple, yet so powerful and so moving,” Jewison said of Pinsent. “And I think a lot of it was because you believed him.”
Those types of kudos tickled the modest Pinsent.
“Now you see, I don’t talk that way about myself, so I was pleased — it was just terrific,” he said about similar praise at the time from English actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
Venerable Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent talks about the critically acclaimed film Away From Her.
Amid the plaudits, Pinsent had a tragedy in his personal life as the film was being released: King, his wife of 45 years, died in January 2007 after a long struggle with emphysema.
“It was something I wasn’t necessarily drawing on except in the general sense of how anyone must feel at a certain time of life after spending so many years with a partner,” an emotional Pinsent said then.
“It’s almost impossible to grasp … how do you prepare? Where does love go? Where do you go, the leftover?”
King and Pinsent had one child together, actress Leah Pinsent. He also had two children from an earlier marriage, Barry and Beverly.
A Renaissance man
Pinsent was also a painter, a writer, a playwright and a director. Two of his Newfoundland-set novels, The Rowdyman and John and the Missus, were turned into feature films. Pinsent starred in the former and both directed and acted in the latter.
His memoirs, By the Way, were published in 1994.
Though he struggled with chronic pain in his later years, Pinsent remained prolific, with about 20 acting credits during the 2010s.
At age 80, he went viral on CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes by reading 16-year-old Justin Bieber’s memoir with mock gravitas.
Pinsent reads Justin Bieber’s memoir:
And at 81, he put out an album of his own poetry set to rock music by Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo and Travis Good of The Sadies.
In 2016, he released a short film he wrote and self-funded called Martin’s Hagge, about a middle-aged writer burdened by a personified version of anxiety and depression.
He said he kept working because each new project felt like getting away with something he didn’t quite deserve.
“I ran fast before they could catch me and say, ‘No, no, acting is for silly people!'” he told CBC News in 2010.
George speaks with Canadian acting great Gordon Pinsent about his life and career in the film and theatre industry.
Canadian actor R.H. Thomson, who has been almost as prolific as Pinsent, said in the 2016 documentary that artists have an enormous role in how a country’s “cloth is woven.”
“And artists like Gordon … [have] pulled that thread back and forth, as Canada’s loom has made this cloth of who we are and where we’ve been and where we’re going to,” he said.
“And that colour of Gordon Pinsent going through and through the tapestry is now inevitably part of any story of Canada for me.”
Toddlers ran through aisles filled with snacks and candies. Adults slumped in chairs. Multiple cellphones were plugged into a single wall socket. Backpacks and suitcases were scattered among the two rows of tables in a corner of this small-town bus stop and gas station.
After they were turned away at the Canadian border and spent three days in detention, the roughly 15 asylum seekers at the Mountain Mart No. 109 in the town of Plattsburgh, N.Y., south of Montreal, on Tuesday afternoon were trying to figure out what to do.
They had tried to get into the country at the popular unofficial crossing on Roxham Road in the hours after a new border deal between Canada and the U.S. came into effect late last week.
Alan Rivas, a Peruvian man who was hoping to reunite with his girlfriend who’s been living in Montreal for two years, said he’d spent $4,000 on making it this far.
“I’m trying to think about what to do now.”
A sense of solidarity emerged as people recognized each other from various parts of their time stuck on the border, along with a sense of resignation and deep disappointment.
“Disappointing and heartbreaking,” said a man from Central Africa, whom CBC agreed not to identify because he fears it could affect his asylum claim process in the United States.
He had shared a cab ride with a man from Chad, who fled to the U.S. after the government of his country led a violent crackdown on opponents last fall.
“It’s unfair. We are not home and we suffer. We’re looking for a better life,” the man from Central Africa said.
The man from Chad looked up and said: “No, looking for protection is not having a better life. I had a life.”
The Chadian was not let into Canada despite his wife and child being Canadian citizens, he said. Having a family member with legal status in Canada is one of the few exemptions to the strict new rules that make it nearly impossible to claim asylum at the Canada-U.S. border. His wife and child fled to a nearby country after the crackdown in Chad, but he explained that his wife’s family is still in Canada.
Other exemptions include being an unaccompanied minor and having a work permit or other official document allowing a person to be in Canada.
“They made me sign a paper without giving me time to read it. They didn’t explain anything,” said the man, whom CBC also agreed not to name because he fears for his family’s safety in an African country near Chad.
The Canada-U.S. deal was implemented swiftly before the weekend, leaving local governments and organizations little time to respond and turned-away asylum seekers struggling to find food, shelter and rides.
The man from Central Africa was trying to round up enough money to pay for a $200 bus ticket to Houston, where he would stay with a friend. The man from Chad gave him the $40 he was missing.
The Central African said he had spent his savings on coming to Canada. His hope was to live here until obtaining residency, and then arranging for his family to come to meet him.
“I know a guy in Houston who hasn’t seen his family in 10 years. He still doesn’t have status,” he said.
A young Haitian mother cradled her baby as her toddler made friends with another child. Her family had paid an acquaintance in New Jersey $300 per adult to get to Roxham Road before midnight Friday, but the driver got lost and they arrived at 12:03 a.m.
Steven, a 24-year-old Venezuelan who attempted to cross into Canada at Roxham early Saturday morning, mingled with the people he’d met in detention. Then he tried to call his mom.
“She doesn’t know,” said Steven, who didn’t want his last name used in this story because of fears it could affect his U.S. asylum claim. “I know I seem happy but I am sad.”
Carmen Salazar, 45, also from Venezuela, watched him from another table.
“It’s hard, really hard,” she said.
The group of asylum seekers at the Mountain Mart had found comfort in finding each other. They all boarded a bus leaving Plattsburgh at 7:45 p.m. Tuesday. Its main destination was New York City.
Others haven’t been so lucky finding a way out of Plattsburgh.
The night before, a woman who was seen at Roxham Road early Saturday, sat alone at the bus stop crying.
3 nights in a motel and no plan
Across the street, in a small motel, a 34-year-old Haitian man and his pregnant girlfriend had one night left out of three that had been paid for by local emergency housing services. But they had no plan and only $41 to their name.
“We’re here. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re going to look for ways to be able to live. What I’m looking for — nothing more — is a place to rest and a place to work. Nothing else,” said the man, sitting in the lobby of the motel. CBC is not naming him because of fears it could affect his American asylum claim.
The couple had intended to stay in the U.S. after crossing the Mexican border, but the woman became pregnant and developed constant pains. In the U.S., they had to stay with separate family members far from each other and the man worried about his wife and being able to afford medical bills, so they decided to try to get to Canada, having heard it was easier to find work and that health-care was more affordable, he said.
In an interview with Radio-Canada Monday, a man from another Central African country struggled to hold back tears.
He said the confusion after being taken in at Roxham Road by RCMP officers was hurtful because it wasn’t clear if he’d be accepted into Canada or not. When they called his name, he was filled with hope, only to be told he was being sent to U.S. Border Patrol.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know where to go. I don’t have anyone who will take me in,” he said.
The response from U.S. Border Patrol appears to be uneven. Some asylum seekers CBC spoke with had taxis called for them, having to pay another $70 to get to the Mountain Mart. One woman was found on the side of the service road by the border and given a ride by a social science researcher and documentary photographer met by CBC.
The man interviewed by Radio-Canada was part of a group who were given a ride to the gas station by a Greyhound bus heading back to New York from Montreal.
CBC reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Monday, asking what happens to asylum seekers rejected by Canada, but did not receive a response.
Although in favour of some kind of change to reduce traffic at Roxham Road, one local official wants help from the federal governments to deal with the fallout.
Michael Cashman, supervisor for the Town of Plattsburgh, says Canada and the U.S. to come up with a response to help asylum seekers get to where they want to go in the U.S.
He isn’t against the move to restrict access to Canada at Roxham Road.
“There had to be a change,” he said, noting residents had been asking for one, but compared the way it was done to turning off a light switch before entering a room: “You’re going to bump into some furniture.”
The area is rural and has its share of struggles with transportation and housing, Cashman said.
“There isn’t a robust infrastructure to be able to take on this humanitarian crisis as it develops.”
On Monday and Tuesday, buses coming from New York carried only a few asylum seekers hoping to cross the border. Most knew about the new rules, believing their cases would fit some of the exemptions. Others still did not know.
By Tuesday, cab drivers were no longer ferrying people to Roxham Road, taking them to the official border crossing at Champlain, N.Y., and Lacolle, Que., instead.
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Canada’s economy might be recovering from the pandemic, but many Canadians are still struggling with the cost of living, thanks, in part, to the impacts of global inflation.
To help offset rising living expenses, the Government of Canada has built some benefit increases and fee reductions into its 2023 budget. Among these measures is a new grocery rebate in the form of a one-time payment for middle- and low-income Canadians that is designed to offset food inflation.
“Our more vulnerable friends and neighbours are still suffering from higher prices,” Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland said after tabling the budget on March 28. “That’s why our budget contains targeted, temporary relief from the effects of inflation for those who need it.”
Here’s what we know about the rebate.
HOW WILL THE GROCERY REBATE WORK?
According to the budget, the benefit will be rolled out through the GST/HST rebate system, once a bill implementing it passes in the House of Commons. This move essentially re-ups and re-brands the recent GST rebate boost.
While no specific date for the payments has been announced, upcoming GST/HST credit payment dates for 2023 include April 5, July 5 and Oct. 5. Because the rebate is automatically rolled into the GST/HST credit, eligible Canadians shouldn’t need to do anything besides file their tax return in order to receive the payment.
WHO GETS THE GROCERY REBATE IN CANADA?
The Grocery Rebate is earmarked for 11 million low- to modest-income Canadians. It will provide eligible couples with two children with up to $467, single Canadians without children with up to $234 and seniors with $225 on average.
The budget doesn’t pinpoint any eligibility brackets based on income, but outlines hypothetical scenarios where a couple earning $38,000 per year and an individual earning $32,000 both received the maximum rebate.
Since the rebate will be rolled into the GST/HST credit, the eligibility criteria for that credit might offer some insight into who will be eligible for the maximum Grocery Rebate amounts.
The GST benefit is reduced as income rises. It’s phased out entirely once income reaches just over $49,000 for a single person, $50,000 for a couple without children and more than $60,000 for a couple with four children.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO FEED A FAMILY OF 4 IN CANADA?
The average family of four will spend up to $16,288.41 on food this year, according to the latest Canada’s Food Price Report, published by the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University.
“For a family of four, their food bill will increase by about $1,100 this year,” the lab’s director, Sylvain Charlebois, told CTV News Calgary on Tuesday.
The cost of staple grocery items based on March 2023 prices listed on Fortinos.ca. (CTV’s Your Morning)
The most substantial increases will be in the cost of vegetables, dairy and meat, according to the report. Food inflation has softened somewhat in recent weeks, Charlebois said, but even with that softening and the extra cash in their pockets from the grocery rebate, Canadians aren’t out of the woods yet.
“We are expecting things to be a little more manageable for households probably in the summer, (but) not before then,” he said. “We are expecting to finish the year with a food inflation rate of about four to five per cent. It’s still high, but it’s better than 10 per cent.”
HOW CAN I SAVE MONEY ON GROCERIES IN CANADA?
As finance commentator Pattie Lovett-Reid pointed out during an interview on CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday, a maximum grocery rebate of $467 for a family of four doesn’t even offset half of the additional $1,100 families can expect to spend on groceries in 2023.
“It’s a small amount that will help a family of four,” she said. “But, is it enough? No, it’s not, we’ve got to get inflation down.”
With their spending power significantly weakened, a growing number of consumers are looking for new ways to save on their grocery bills.
According to a March 22 report published by the Agri-Food Analytics Lab, in partnership with Angus Reid, some of the methods Canadians are using to save money at the grocery store include reading weekly flyers, using coupons, taking advantage of volume discounting and using food rescue apps such as Too Good To Go and the Second Harvest Food Rescue App.
– With files from Senior Digital Parliamentary Reporter Rachel Aiello
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D HOWELL
Drops
“MAN DEM”
By way of Spanish Town
Toronto, On – International selling Pop/ Reggae artist, D Howell drops his new single, “Man Dem “available now, on all major music platforms. The release featuring Ding Dong & Nicky B follows a long list of hit music from the talented pop-reggae artist. Howell’s single, ’Wine Bounce” with Jamaican born reggae artist Dominant ft. Nick B was picked up by Universal Music, solidifying Howell’s career with the likes of Sean Paul, Elephant Man and Sarani. The artist contributes his Jamaican roots to the success of his brand. Keeping his early beginnings in Spanish Town, Jamacia close to his heart, “Man Dem” (meaning multiple men) was created. The single is inspired by the multicultural people of Toronto with special consideration to the immigrants from Jamaica. Their specific style of talking is heard on every street corner in Toronto. The new generation have made it their own, a way of bringing and keeping their heritage alive. Howell’s music speaks to that, making the heritage & the music one. The highly anticipated release of “Man Dem” will take you home to Spanish Town.
DJ, producer and artist, D Howell knows what it takes to make hit singles. It’s not just talent that makes a single a hit, but the chemistry & respect for your fellow artists. Knowing what works and what doesn’t between artists is key. Mixing different instruments, sounds and styles to create his always evolving pop reggae sound has made Howell an in-demand producer and artist. From the super hit ‘Jumanji’ to a lineup of multi-selling collaborations featuring his unique reggae influence, Howell makes it work. Collaborations with Karl Wolf (“Fall in Love”), Danny Fernandes (“Party”) and the man himself, Sean Paul (“Time to Party”). Howell writes for and brings together a wide range of artists from different genres into his studio to create a combination of sounds that works on the music charts today. D Howell brings the love, nurture & music of his early beginnings to his seat at the industry table. “Man Dem” takes you on that journey…
Listen to Man Dem”
https://open.spotify.com/album/7nW1yToUEz2I2OUdZ9jVso?si=DxAcnCwbTNOwkQvwhaFvUA
Follow D Howell:
https://soundcloud.com/realdhowell/nicky-b-man-dem-clean
https://www.instagram.com/realdhowell/
https://www.youtube.com/@diamienrecords
https://twitter.com/realdhowell
Media Inquiries:
Sasha Stoltz Publicity:
Sasha Stoltz | Sasha@sashastoltzpublicity.com | 416.579.4804
https://www.sashastoltzpublicity.com
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