Library and Archives Canada Scholar Awards

The Library and Archives Canada Scholar Awards, co-presented by the LAC Foundation and Library and Archives Canada, with the generous support of Founding Sponsor Air Canada, recognize remarkable Canadians who have made an outstanding contribution to the creation and promotion of our country’s culture, literary heritage and historical knowledge.

As the custodian of our distant past and of our recent history, Library and Archives Canada is an essential resource for all Canadians who wish to know themselves better, individually and collectively.

As such, it is essential for Library and Archives Canada and the Library and Archives Canada Foundation to recognize the exemplary work of those who support its fundamental mission which is to promote all aspects of Canadian culture, here and around the world.

This recognition also seeks to highlight the fact that the creation and dissemination of our heritage are increasingly democratic undertakings, no longer reserved to environments where knowledge has traditionally been developed.

 

Alfred Pellan painted this mural, Les Alphabets / The Alphabets, on the western wall of the second floor in the former National Library of Canada building at 395 Wellington Street in Ottawa, which is currently Library and Archives Canada’s main building. This work, and the accompanying mural on the eastern wall entitled La Connaissance / Knowledge, was begun in 1957 and completed just over a decade later. The Quebec artist began this work by first creating preliminary studies, on a smaller scale, for both murals. Library and Archives Canada holds both of these studies in its collection; they are described in The Alphabets and Knowledge.

For Les Alphabets / The Alphabets, Pellan contrasts vibrant colours on a largely grey background, using flat paint to ensure that his work would not reflect light. The mosaic at the centre of the piece shows schematic faces topped with pen nibs surrounding an open book. The design evokes a human face. A popular interpretation, and one that the artist supports, is that these are the faces of readers and writers. The swirling scripts are from two dozen languages, including ancient, medieval and modern languages (Illyrian, Hebrew, Etruscan and many more).

2024 Recipients

• Reneltta Arluk

  

  Reneltta Arluk is Inuvialuk, Dene, and Cree from the Northwest Territories. Raised by her grandparents on the trapline until school-age, Reneltta’s early nomadic life provided her with the unique skills needed to become the multi-disciplined nomadic performing artist she is today. Through this lived experience and artistic training, Reneltta has acquired the specialized cultural protocol awarenesses and artistic Indigenous lens in which she works from.

  As the Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Reneltta was responsible for the vision to design Indigenous-led Arts programming across all artistic disciplines and to offer support for inclusionary programming for Indigenous artists campus-wide. She was also responsible for developing and strengthening relationships with Treaty 6 Indigenous community members, and forging partnerships with non-Indigenous artistic institutions regionally, nationally and globally, all with the intention of creating space for Indigenous voices.

  Reneltta holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Alberta, where she became the first Indigenous woman and first Inuk to graduate from the reputable program. For over 20 years, Reneltta has been part of or initiated the creation of Indigenous theatre across Canada and overseas. In 2008, she founded Akpik Theatre, the only professional Indigenous theatre company in the Northwest Territories. Adhering to its namesake, the cloudberry, Akpik Theatre strives to flourish in the northern climate it reflects by developing, mentoring and producing performance-based work that is northern-Indigenous inspired and created. Reneltta is also the first Inuk and Indigenous woman to direct at the Stratford Festival, where she received the Festival’s 2017 Tyrone Guthrie—Derek F. Mitchell Artistic Director's Award for directing The Breathing Hole by playwright Colleen Murphy.

  Reneltta advocates for cultural change in Canada as an artist, board member and arts administrator. She extends that stewardship internationally as an arts leader utilizing inherent Indigenous value systems.

• Kate Beaton

  

  Kate Beaton was born and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. After graduating from Mount Allison University with a double degree in History and Anthropology, she moved to Alberta in search of work that would allow her to pay down her student loans.

  During the years she spent out in Western Canada, Beaton began creating webcomics under the name Hark! A Vagrant, quickly drawing a substantial following around the world. The collections of her landmark strips Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside, Pops each spent several months on the New York Times graphic novel bestseller list, as well as appeared on best-of-the-year lists from Time, The Washington Post, Vulture, NPR Books, and winning the Eisner, Ignatz, Harvey, and Doug Wright awards. She has also published the picture books King Baby and The Princess and the Pony.

  Her most recent book is the award-winning memoir Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, which was named a New York Times Notable Book, a Canada Reads Selection, and one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of the year.

  Beaton lives in Cape Breton with her family.

• René Homier-Roy

  

  René Homier-Roy was born in Montréal on April 5, 1940.

  In 1958, he studied architecture at McGill University, then political science at the University of Ottawa and the Université de Montréal. In 1963, he began managing the arts and entertainment pages of Le Petit Journal, and in 1969, those of the daily newspaper La Presse.

  In 1973, in collaboration with Varham G. Haroutioun and Paul Azaria, he launched Nous magazine, which had 100 000 copies published and which he managed until the end of the 80s. In 1976, after the departure of Lise Payette, he co-hosted the late-night program “Mesdames et Messieurs” on Radio-Canada television.

  In 1982, he launched Ticket magazine, focusing on film, and the following year hosted “À première vue” with Chantal Jolis, a series of programs dedicated to film news on Radio-Canada television.

  At the same time, he hosted several programs on CKAC radio and co-hosted “Montréal Matin” on CKVL with Pierre Bourgault.

  In the years that followed, he contributed extensively to the magazines Châtelaine, l’Actualité, TV Hebdo and Sélection du Reader’s Digest.

  From May 1998 until 2013, he hosted the Radio-Canada morning show “C’est bien meilleur le matin,” whose market shares grew from 7 to 21 over the years.

  On television, he hosted “Viens voir les comédiens,” a series of wide-ranging interviews he conducted until 2012, which would later become “Viens voir les musiciens” on radio.

  Since 2014, he has been hosting “Culture club” on Ici Radio-Canada Première, a magazine devoted to cultural news.

• Rohinton Mistry

  

  Rohinton Mistry, novelist and short-story writer, was born in Bombay and came to Canada in 1975 after completing a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Economics at St. Xavier’s College, Bombay University. For the next few years, he worked for a bank while taking evening courses in English literature and philosophy at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan), York University, and the University of Toronto.

  He started writing in 1983, and his first book, Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987), was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Its eleven linked stories, set during the 1960s and 1970s, trace the patterns of life in a run-down apartment block in Bombay.

  Three novels followed; all were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In Such a Long Journey (1991), the backdrop is the 1971 conflict between India and Pakistan—the war that ended with the birth of Bangladesh. The novel won the Governor General’s Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, and the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award. It was made into an acclaimed feature film in 1998.

  Rohinton Mistry’s second novel, A Fine Balance (1995), takes the reader to mid-1970s India, the time when a countrywide state of emergency was declared. The book won the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Award, and Denmark’s ALOA Prize. The novel was selected for Oprah’s Book Club, and in 2013, on the 20^th anniversary of the Giller Prize, it won the CBC Books’ Giller of All Gillers.

  In his third novel, Family Matters (2002), the protagonist is a 79-year-old widower with Parkinson’s disease, negotiating domestic strife and the infirmities of old age. It won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for Fiction and the Canadian Authors Association Fiction Award.

  Rohinton Mistry has received honorary degrees from several universities, as well as the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation’s Fellows Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009, awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2012, and appointed to the Order of Canada in 2016. His work has been published in more than 35 languages.

• Shani Mootoo

  

  Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad, relocating to Canada in her early twenties. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) in 1980, and a Master of Arts in English and Theatre from the University of Guelph in 2010. While she practiced initially as a video maker and visual artist, for the last 30 years Mootoo has concentrated on novel writing, poetry, and photo-based work.

  Mootoo’s artworks have been exhibited internationally, including at the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Venice Biennale. Her first collection of short stories, Out on Main Street, was published in 1993, beginning her literary career. Her first novel, Cereus Blooms at Night, was published in 1996 and shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, as well as being longlisted for the Booker Prize. Today, it has been reissued as both a Penguin Modern Classic and a Vintage Classic.

  The Predicament of Or, her first collection of poetry, was published in 2002. Other novels include He Drown She in the Sea, which was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, Valmiki’s Daughter, and Moving Forward Sideways like a Crab, both of which were longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Mootoo’s latest novel, Polar Vortex, was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Her second book of poetry, Cane|Fire, was published in 2022, and her third, Oh Witness Dey!, in 2024.

  Mootoo has served as writer-in-residence at universities across the world and frequently reads and speaks internationally. She was awarded a Doctor of Letters honoris causa from Western University, is a recipient of Lambda Literary’s James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, and has been named a Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award Winner. The Writers’ Trust jury citation reads, in part, “With deep understanding and a fearless devotion, she worries at the knot of identity and transformation revealing, in an ever-expanding way, the cost of pursuing one’s dreams.”

  Mootoo lives in Southern Ontario.

2023 Recipients

• Anita Rau Badami

  

  Anita Rau Badami is an award-winning novelist who was born in Rourkela, Odisha, India, in 1961 before moving to Canada in 1991. Her novels, which have been translated into more than a dozen languages worldwide, deal with the complexities of family life and issues associated with immigration to the West. Her use of humour and the memorable characters she has created have helped expand the understanding of the Canadian experience and the cultural heritage of our country.

  Ms. Badami published her first story when she was only 18. After graduating university, where she studied English Literature, followed by a graduate diploma in Social Communications Media, she worked as a freelance writer before moving to Canada and earning her M.A. in English Literature at the University of Calgary. Her graduate thesis became her first novel, Tamarind Mem (1996), which explores the complicated forces of memory and familial expectation.

  Ms. Badami’s second novel, The Hero’s Walk (2001), tells the story of an ordinary Indian man who has to care for his Canadian granddaughter after the sudden death of her parents. It won the Regional Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award and Italy’s Premio Berto. It was longlisted for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction). It was also shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize and a finalist for the 2016 Canada Reads competition.

  Both Ms. Badami’s third and fourth novels were also longlisted for the IMPAC Award. Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (2006), which was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award, moves between Canada and India and explores the conflicts among ordinary people caused by major events such as the Partition of India in 1947 and the 1985 Air India bombing. Tell It to the Trees (2012), about the silence surrounding domestic abuse, was a finalist for the OLA Evergreen Award.

  In 2000, Ms. Badami was the youngest recipient ever of the Marian Engel Award, which recognizes a Canadian woman author in mid-career. She is currently working on her fifth novel, tentatively titled It Is As It Is, as well as co-authoring the non-fiction book Mixed Borders: An exchange between countries and continents.

  Ms. Badami was the Chair of the 2017 Giller Prize and has served as a juror for the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction, the Writer’s Trust Prize and the inaugural 2023 Carol Shields Prize.

• Eric Chan

  

  Eric Chan (a.k.a. eepmon) is a world-renowned digital artist whose work sits at the intersection of fine arts, design and technology. His fusion of art and computer code and the traditional and the modern, as well as the artistic and the commercial, demonstrates his unique ability to create in the ever-changing landscape of modern, contemporary society.

  As eepmon, he has collaborated on designs with companies and institutions including Canada Goose, Marvel Entertainment, Microsoft, Snoopy, Quantropi and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. His artwork Chaos Bloom has been acquired by the Canada Council Art Bank, and he has participated in art performances such as Gutai: Splendid Playground at the Guggenheim Museum. His open data paintings, INTERSECTIONS, were shown at Gallery O2 Tokyo, HPGRP Gallery New York, Carleton University and the Ottawa Art Gallery. He is a passionate speaker on themes surrounding STEAM education and art x entrepreneurship.

  In 2018, eepmon travelled to China as a delegate on Canada’s first creative industries trade mission, led by Canadian Heritage. Between 2017 and 2021, he served first as a Director and then as a Vice President on the Canadian Museums Association’s Board of Directors.

  Born and raised in Ottawa, Mr. Chan came up with the concept of his alter ego eepmon while in university, formally establishing his company EEPMON Inc. in 2017. The name eepmon is a wordplay on “ape man,” chosen because under the Chinese zodiac he was born in the year of the monkey. The monkey also serves as a reminder to himself that life should always include curiosity and playfulness—observed through many of his designs that feature creatures floating through his digital worlds.

   

• Michel Jean

  

   

  Michel Jean is a writer, news anchor, host and investigative reporter from the community of Mashteuiatsh, Quebec. Mr. Jean uses his works to make his readers aware of Indigenous issues. Through his books, he deals sensitively with complex and sometimes painful issues in a way that has touched thousands of readers. He is also recognized for the important role he has played in the journalistic field.

  Born in 1960, Mr. Jean studied history at the Université de Québec à Montréal before beginning his career as a journalist. His experiences as a reporter inspired his first book, Envoyé special (2008), and influenced some of his novels, such as Un monde mort comme la lune (2009) and Tsunamis (2017).

  Many of Mr. Jean’s works deal with his Innu heritage and the experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada. His 2019 novel Kukum, which tells the story of his community through the eyes of his grandmother, won the Prix littéraire France-Québec in 2020 and was a finalist for the Prix littéraire Jacques Lacarrière that same year.

  Some of his other works deal with residential schools (Le vent en parle encore, 2013), urban Indigenous homelessness (Tiohtiá:ke, 2021), and his own Innu heritage (Elle et nous, 2012). Mr. Jean also edited several short story collections, including Amun (2016), the first anthology of Indigenous literature from Quebec, and Wapke (2021), Quebec’s first collection of science fiction short stories by Indigenous writers.

  In 2022, Mr. Jean was made a member of the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec, an honorary distinction awarded to individuals who have played a prominent role in Quebec’s artistic development.

• Kevin Loring

  

  Kevin Loring is a playwright, actor and director from the Nlaka’pamux First Nation in Lytton, British Columbia. In his work, he uses Indigenous theatre methodologies and language to explore issues affecting Indigenous peoples and to bring Indigenous stories and songs to audiences in Indigenous communities and to stages across the country.

  Mr. Loring is a graduate of Studio 58, Langara College’s prestigious professional theatre training program, and of Full Circle: First Nations Performance’s ensemble training program. Loring was honoured with an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ottawa in 2022. As an actor, he has performed in roles on both the big and small screens and on stages across the country. He is also a voice actor with numerous credits for animated characters, including the voice of Raven in Raven Tales: the Movie and two characters on Corner Gas: The Animated Series.

  Mr. Loring won the Governor General’s Award for English Language Drama in 2009 for his first play, Where the Blood Mixes, which explores the devastating impacts of residential schools. The play also won both the Jessie Richardson Award and the Sydney J. Risk Prize for outstanding original script. Mr. Loring’s play Thanks for Giving was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award in 2019. His latest play, Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer, won the 2022 Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script.

  In 2012, Mr. Loring created the Songs of the Land project, which explores audio recordings from the late 1800s and early 1900s of songs and stories of the Nlaka’pamux First Nation. As part of this project, Mr. Loring has written several plays, including Battle of the Birds (2015), about domestic violence and abuse of power; The Boy Who Was Abandoned (2016), about youth and elder neglect; and The Council of Spider, Ant & Fly (2018), about the introduction of death into the universe.

  Mr. Loring received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Mentorship Award in 2010. He is the founding Artistic Director of Savage Production Society, and in 2017 he became the first Artistic Director of Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada. Under Loring’s leadership, Savage Society won a 2022 Jessie Richardson award for Outstanding Empowering and Uplifting of Indigenous Artists and Narratives.

• Dorothy Williams

  

  Dorothy Williams is a historian, author and researcher who specializes in the history of Black Canadians. Through her public presentations, her work with the National Film Board of Canada and her efforts to make resources related to the historical presence of Black Canadians more widely available, she has expanded the cultural and historical heritage of our country.

  Dr. Williams grew up in the historic Black community of Little Burgundy in Montreal. She published her first book, Blacks in Montreal, 1628-1986: An Urban Demography, at the behest of the Quebec Human Rights Commission in 1989 for their study on racism in Montreal’s rental housing. Her second book, The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal, published in 1997, remains the only chronological study of Blacks on the island of Montreal.

  With the objective of making Black history accessible to all, in 1995 Dr. Williams founded the non-profit organization Ethnocultural Diffusions to collect the oral history of Blacks in Montreal. Eleven years later, she registered Blacbiblio.com Inc. to record Canada’s Black history sources. Blacbiblio launched the ABC’s of Canadian Black History kit in 2016 to promote the teaching of Black history in Canadian schools. Dr.Williams also teaches the extremely popular Concordia University course Black Montreal, which aims to dispel myths and misconceptions around Montreal’s Black history.

  Dr. Williams has been recognized with many awards, including the Mathieu da Costa Award, and she was the first Canadian to win the ALA’s prestigious E. J. Josey Scholarship. In 2002, she was made a Quebec Laureate and received the Anne Greenup Award for the fight against racism and the promotion of civic participation. In 2022, she was given the John G. Dennison Award for her “research, scholarly publications, teaching and public speaking engagements showcasing Canada’s Black History.”

  For revealing Quebec’s Black history to the world, in 2022 Dr. Williams was honoured as the subject of the first exhibition in the Afromuseum, Quebec’s first Black museum. She was also named as one of CBC Quebec’s 2022 Black Changemakers.

2022 Recipients

• Jean-Marc Carisse

  

  Jean-Marc Carisse is an accomplished Canadian photojournalist, visual artist and author. He has photographed political, cultural and social scenes in Ottawa and around the globe for over 50 years. The extraordinary images he has created through the camera lens over the course of his career have been and will continue to be an inspiration to many generations of Canadian visual artists. His photographic legacy bears witness to our collective history and enriches our cultural heritage.

  Mr. Carisse is best known for the spontaneous photographs he took as one of the official photographers for three of Canada’s prime ministers. In 2000, he published a book on this experience, entitled Privileged Access with Trudeau, Turner & Chrétien. Mr. Carisse has been an accredited photographer for many world events, such as G7 and G8 summits, Summit of the Peacemakers, Francophone summits, Summit of the Americas, and intergovernmental organizations, including the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

  Mr. Carisse’s photo exhibit My Trudeau Years was on display at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) from October 2002 to April 2003. It was extended by three months due to its popularity and then moved on to Winnipeg. The exhibit reflected his professional relationship with Pierre Trudeau and their mutual respect, and included some previously unpublished images. This last sitting together, weeks prior to Trudeau’s passing, is a testament to their relationship.

  Mr. Carisse donated part of his collections on Pierre Trudeau, John Turner and Jean Chrétien (69,000 negatives, Jean-Marc Carisse fonds) and on Jean Chrétien (400,000 negatives, Jean Chrétien fonds) to LAC.

  Mr. Carisse obtained a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ottawa in 1974. In 2002, he was awarded a Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for his outstanding contribution to Canada.

• Jeremy Dutcher

  

  Jeremy Dutcher is a Canadian performer, composer, activist and musicologist, and a member of Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick. In his career, he has consistently merged the old and the new, the historical and the contemporary, in bold compositions and melodies. By reimagining the traditional songs of his Wolastoq First Nation ancestors, Mr. Dutcher has revived past stories and is keeping the Wolastoqey language alive.

  Mr. Dutcher studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax. After graduating, he had the opportunity to work in the archives at the Canadian Museum of History, transcribing Wolastoq songs from century-old wax cylinders. Inspired by his ancestor’s recordings from 1907–14, Mr. Dutcher recorded his debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, which he releasedin April 2018 at the age of 27. In this album, he creatively uses archival material to create a vibrant contemporary work that is sung entirely in Wolastoqey.

  In 2018, the Polaris Grand Jury deemed Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa to be the best Canadian album of the year and awarded Mr. Dutcher the Polaris Music Prize. The following year, at the 2019 Juno Awards, Mr. Dutcher won the Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year.

   

• Stan Douglas

  

   

  Stan Douglas is a Canadian visual artist and photographer born in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he continues to live and work. Throughout his life, Mr. Douglas has created and re-enacted pivotal moments in Canadian history, connecting us to geography, culture, literature, music, media, social revolution and more—with incredible detail and exquisite results.

  Mr. Douglas studied at Emily Carr College of Art in Vancouver in the early 1980s. He had his first American solo exhibition in 1993, the second-ever artist to be featured at the David Zwirner Gallery. Mr. Douglas’s fascination with history inspired him to reconstruct and reinterpret cultural artifacts—films, books and photographs—to find new truths or perspectives in several artistic disciplines.

  Mr. Douglas’s work is held in major museum collections in Canada and around the world, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Tate Modern in London. His work has also been featured in world exhibitions such as documenta IX, X and XI (1992, 1997 and 2002) and the Venice Biennale (1990, 2001, 2005 and 2019).

  Mr. Douglas has received numerous awards, including the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts (2019), the Hasselblad Award (2016), the Scotiabank Photography Award (2013), and the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography (2012). Mr. Douglas is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. He has been chosen to represent Canada, for the first time, in the Canada Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, which will take place from April to November 2022.

• Naomi Fontaine

  

  Naomi Fontaine is a Canadian novelist, a teacher and a member of the Innu Nation from Uashat, Quebec. Thanks to Ms. Fontaine’s work, the past and present, joys and pains of the Innu people have touched thousands of readers and cinephiles well beyond the borders of Quebec and Canada. She has contributed significantly Canada’s culture and collective memory, and plays an important role in teaching the adults of tomorrow. She is also recognized for her efforts in the areas of dialogue between peoples and reconciliation.

  Ms. Fontaine studied at Université Laval and is noted as one of the most prominent First Nations writers in contemporary francophone Canadian literature. She wrote her debut novel Kuessipan (2011) in French when she was twenty-three years old. The poetry novel revolutionized Indigenous literature as she was the first Innu writer to tell a contemporary story.

  Ms. Fontaine’s second novel, Manikanetish (2017), tells the story of a young teacher who returns to her remote Innu community and transforms the lives of her students. Her latest book, Shuni (2019), is also about her community. It invites readers to open their minds as the writer goes beyond statistics to tell the stories of the individuals of Uashat.

  Ms. Fontaine has been nominated many awards, including the Prix des 5 continents de la Francophonie (2011) and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction in French (2018). Her debut novel was successfully adapted to the screen in 2019, and the film was nominated for the Prix Iris for Best Screenplay at the 22A Quebec Cinema Awards in 2020.

• Deepa Mehta

  

  Deepa Mehta is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who was born in Amritsar, India, in 1950 and moved to Canada in 1973. She is a masterful storyteller, combining history, traditions and the sometimes harsh realities of the human experience in both her native India and Canada, her adopted homeland. Her careful use of literature and archives of all kinds in support of her work has led to a remarkable contribution to Canada’s cultural and historical heritage.

  Ms. Mehta graduated from the Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi, with a degree in Philosophy. In 1996, she cofounded Hamilton-Mehta Productions with her husband, producer David Hamilton, in Toronto. Ms. Mehta believes that "The power of cinema is that it can start a dialogue." Her provocative and moving films, which largely focus on issues of human rights and social injustice, have earned her an international reputation.

  Ms. Mehta’s award-winning films include the Elemental Trilogy: Fire (1996), Earth (1998)and Water (2005)—Water was an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007—Bollywood/Hollywood (2002), Heaven on Earth (2008), Midnight’s Children (2012), Anatomy of Violence (2016) and Funny Boy (2020). Ms. Mehta has also directed episodes of “Leila” (Netflix Original), “Little America” (Apple TV) and “Yellowjackets” (Showtime). She is currently working on the feature film Burnt Sugar (Girl in White Cotton), based on Avni Doshi’s Booker-shortlisted novel.

  Ms. Mehta received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2012, as well as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal. In 2013, she was appointed to both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada.