Gordon Sheppard

Gordon Sheppard was born in Montreal and raised in Toronto. During the 1950s, he received a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto, and then a Master’s from Oxford University. He spent the 1960s working in TV and films, at newspapers and the federal government. In 1975 he wrote, produced, and directed a feature film, Eliza’s Horoscope, and for a time lived in California. By the 80s, he had moved back to Montreal. The turn of the decade brought with it a collaboration on music and lyrics for the Marie-Claire Seguin album Une femme une planete. He also created Personal Archives, a photographic exhibition featuring Quebec poet-politican Gerald Godin; Stages, a photographic exhibition about the death of his mother; and The Rowers, a photographic study of rowing. The critically acclaimed HA!, an investigation of the suicide of Hubert Aquin, was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in the spring of 2003. The book was shortlisted for the 2004 Hugh MacLennan Prize and the 2005 Canada Reads competition. Sheppard died in 2006.