IN MEMORIAM
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A moment to remember those who have passed on from our community and to honour their contribution to Canadian arts and culture.
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Belanger, Sylvie (1951–2020)
Benner, Tom (1950–2022) Bidner, Michael (1944–1989) Brown, John (1953–2020) Buchan, David (1950–1993) Cardinal-Schubert, Joane (1942–2009) Curnoe, Greg (1936–1992) Deadman, Patricia (1961–2024) de Kergommeaux, Duncan (1927-2024) Diamond, Reid (1958–2001) ferris, kerry (1949–2016) Goldstein, Sybil (1954–2012) Golub, Leon (1922–2004) Haller, Helen (1949–2019) Haller, Tyson (1962–2021) |
Hay, Jean (1929–2008)
Heller, Susanna (1956–2021) Hyatt, Barbara (1934–2013) Johnson, Rae (1953–2020) McKaskell, Robert (1943–2020) Miller, Bernie (1948–2017) Ryder, Florence (1935–2005) Smoke, Dan (1954–2024) Snow, Michael (1928–2023) Spero, Nancy (1926–2009) Tamblyn, John (1947–2012) Townsend, Melanie (1968–2018) Vincent, Bernice (1934–2016) Vincent, Don (1932–1993) |
2020 to present |
The decade of the 2020s has hit the world and our community hard as the COVID-19 Pandemic ravages across the globe. News of friends and family members passing on either from COVID or other health reasons has left us shaken. This website was create as way to celebrate the contributions of our members both in this world and beyond and it is both melancholic and heartening to mourn together. Below are a few of those we wish to recognize who had reconnected with the Embassy Cultural House website sine we launched in the summer of 2020:
It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of Canadian artist Tom Benner, who died at home in London, Ontario on Sept. 21, 2022, age 72. Tom is well-known in London for his iconic, White Rhino, from 1985-1986, a metal sculpture installed on the grounds of Museum London. In 1990, Tom Benner presented a solo exhibition at the ECH. The exhibition was a series of works titled "The Coves" and was organized by Doug Mitchell. Among other works in the collection of Museum London is the powerful Hanging Fin (Whale) sculpture from 1983. On May 5, 2021, we were deeply saddened to learn of the death of the remarkable painter Susanna Heller, who passed away in New York. ECH co-founder Jamelie Hassan first met Susanna in 1984 when they were both living at La Cité internationale des arts in Paris through the Canada Council for the Arts. In 1986, Susanna came to London to present a solo exhibition of her recent works at the Embassy Cultural House. Recently, in October 2020, she reconnected with the ECH, presenting one of her startling paintings, Eyes in a Bleak World, 2020 for the open call online exhibition Hiding in Plain Sight . On March 16, 2021, Tyson Haller passed away in Ottawa. He was a strong supporter and advocate of the ECH both during its original program at the Embassy Hotel between 1983 - 1990 and its present online format. Tyson's parents Helen and Egon owned the Embassy Hotel from the late 1970s until it was sold in 2001. He was a huge part of the running of the hotel and organized the music program in the hotel bars. Tyson had connected with the ECH web project over the last year and had provided poems and photos for his contributor page. On October 8, 2020, Sylvie Bélanger peacefully passed away in Montreal on October 8, 2020, at the age of 69 after a courageous battle with cancer. A well-known artist in the field of video and installation, her work has been the subject of major exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Along with her career as an artist, over the years she taught at the University of Windsor, We invite you to revisit the short film about Sylvie on the NFB's website. On June 30, 2020, good friend and independent curator and writer, Bob McKaskell died. He was living between Port Dover, Ontario and Oaxaca, Mexico. While in Oaxaca he decided to study Spanish and he had just initiated a program of curating exhibits of Oaxacan artists in his apartment located in the centro historico of Oaxaca. There are so many fond memories of Bob - especially close to our hearts is the survey exhibition he curated Embassy Cultural House - 1983 - 1990 at Museum London in 2012. It was Bob's passing that spurred us to launch the website as way to recognize his contribution to documenting the ECH's history. |
