25 influential people who died in 2024

Liam Payne performs during the first day of BBC Radio 1's Biggest Weekend at Singleton Park in Wales in 2018.Ben Birchall/The Associated Press

The world lost many greats in 2024, people who made profound impacts on culture, politics and society. Here are 25 of the most influential people who died this year.

Jimmy Carter

A Democrat, Jimmy Carter served as president from January 1977 to January 1981 after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 U.S. election. Mr. Carter was swept from office four years later in an electoral landslide as voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, the former actor and California governor.

Mr. Carter lived longer after his term in office than any other U.S. president. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a better former president than he was a president – a status he readily acknowledged.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Despite his difficulties in office, Carter had few rivals for accomplishments as a former president. He gained global acclaim as a tireless human rights advocate, a voice for the disenfranchised and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, winning the respect that eluded him in the White House.

Donald Sutherland

Across more than 125 productions, Donald Sutherland’s career came to define modern cinema. Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, Alan J. Pakula’s Klute, John Landis’s Animal House, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Robert Redford’s Ordinary People.

It is a filmography so medium-altering to make you dizzy with envy and respect. And those are just highlights from two of his seven decades on screen. When all the elements lined up in Mr. Sutherland’s filmography, the movies – and the audiences – were changed forever.

The actor famously held onto his Canadian citizenship against all expectations of his made-in-the-U.S. success story.

“They ask me at the border why I don’t take American citizenship. I could still be Canadian, they say. You could have dual citizenship. But I say: No, I’m not dual anything. I’m Canadian,” Mr. Sutherland once wrote in The Globe. “There’s a maple leaf in my underwear somewhere. There used to be a beaver there, too, but I’m 80 now and beavers are known to take off when you’re in your 80s.”

Read more about his life: Donald Sutherland was cinema’s Canadian chameleon

Murray Sinclair

A lawyer, judge, commissioner, senator and fourth-degree chief of the Midewiwin Society, keepers of traditional Anishinaabe knowledge and values, Murray Sinclair had an impact and influence that transcended any formal title. He led four landmark inquiries that yielded sweeping overhauls of policing, medicine, law and Crown-Indigenous relations. The University of Manitoba, his alma mater, called Mr. Sinclair an Elder-in-residence. Canada could very well have done the same.

Mr. Sinclair dedicated himself to law and justice, charting a collision course with some of Canada’s most sacred institutions, including the Catholic Church, which was shaken to its Vatican foundations by the Sinclair-led Truth and Reconciliation Commission, completed in 2015.

Read more about his life: Murray Sinclair stood for truth, justice to the end

Quincy Jones

The producer Quincy Jones will be remembered for his colossal influence on American music and for his 28 Grammy Awards on a whopping 80 nominations. The multitalented music titan’s vast legacy ranged from producing Michael Jackson’s historic Thriller album to writing prize-winning film and television scores and collaborating with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and hundreds of other recording artists.

Mr. Jones rose from running with gangs on the South Side of Chicago to the very heights of show business, becoming one of the first Black executives to thrive in Hollywood and amassing an extraordinary musical catalogue that includes some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song. For years, it was unlikely to find a music lover who did not own at least one record with his name on it, or a leader in the entertainment industry and beyond who did not have some connection to him.

Mr. Jones kept company with presidents and foreign leaders, movie stars and musicians, philanthropists and business leaders. He toured with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, arranged records for Ella Fitzgerald, composed the soundtracks for Roots and In the Heat of the Night, organized U.S. president Bill Clinton’s first inaugural celebration and oversaw the all-star recording of We Are the World, the 1985 charity record for famine relief in Africa.

Read more about his life: Music titan Quincy Jones dies at 91

John Horgan

When John Horgan announced he was stepping down as B.C. premier on June 28, 2022, most people were shocked. The politician had multiple battles with cancer that caused him to step back from his political life and focus his time on family. His popularity remained high in a province renowned for being hard on leaders of all political stripes.

As premier, he did something few political leaders do these days: delegated authority. He gave his cabinet ministers real power, reining them in only when he had to. He was a fiscal conservative – balancing budgets until the pandemic arrived – and a social progressive.

He wasn’t afraid to anger more radical elements in his often-fractious party in the name of the common good. He supported the continued development of the Site C dam he campaigned against in Opposition. He authorized tax benefits necessary for the development of a $40-billion LNG project in Kitimat, against the wishes of the environmental wing of his party.

Alexey Navalny

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny attends a rally in memory of politician Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in 2015, in Moscow, on Feb. 24, 2019.Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters

From the beginning, Alexey Navalny represented a fundamentally different, more dangerous threat to Vladimir Putin’s grasp on power than any of the Russian opposition figures who had come before him. He emerged from relative obscurity in the winter of 2011 to lead a series of massive street protests that remain the greatest domestic challenge Mr. Putin has faced during his quarter-century in power.

The Kremlin, which until then focused on using television as the main way of spreading its propaganda, paying little attention to online media, seemed stunned that a lawyer with no official political party had gained such a large following from his YouTube videos revealing the curious wealth of Russia’s political elite.

He was beaten, jailed, poisoned, jailed again and seemingly starved during repeated stints in the notorious isolation ward of a remote Arctic prison. Despite it all, he kept challenging the Kremlin, including from behind bars by smuggling messages to his team that were then posted to social media.

Last year, after an additional 19 years were added to his prison sentence, Mr. Navalny predicted that he would be kept in prison until either he died or Russia’s authoritarian system collapsed.

Read more about his life: Alexey Navalny troubled the Kremlin like no one else before him

Nerene Virgin

To a generation of Canadian children and their parents, Nerene Virgin was known as Jodie, the character she played on the popular TVOntario program Today’s Special. A trained teacher, she began acting in Canadian television series and some commercials before moving to broadcast journalism, where she hosted a weekly program on CTV and then became an anchor for CBC Newsworld and Newsworld International.

Today’s Special was produced by TVOntario (now TVO) and seen by Canadians on border stations when it was broadcast on PBS in the United States. It also played on Alberta Educational Television and the Nickelodeon cable network, as well as stations in Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Australia and elsewhere. She was most proud of the fact that the show aired in Bophuthatswana, a Black-ruled enclave of South Africa in the early 1980s, when anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was still in prison.

Toby Keith

Toby Keith broke out in the country boom years of the 1990s, writing songs that fans loved to hear. Over his career, the six-foot-four singer publicly clashed with other celebrities and journalists, and often pushed back against record executives who wanted to smooth his rough edges.

He was known for his overt patriotism on songs in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, such as Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, and boisterous barroom tunes such as I Love This Bar and Red Solo Cup. He had a powerful booming voice, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour and range that carried love songs as well as drinking songs.

O.J. Simpson

O.J. Simpson was at the centre of two major cultural moments: When he led police on a slow-motion car chase back to his own house; and 16 months later, when the verdict at his double-murder trial was announced. He was best known for everything that happened between those two moments – his arrest, trial and 1995 acquittal.

He was in many ways the indicative man of his time – a star athlete, a pin-up, a gadabout, a pitchman and a movie star, as well as the defendant in one of the most-watched American criminal trials. Swaths of the current media landscape trace back to Mr. Simpson – everything from sports stars as human brands to true-crime podcasts. He can even take credit for launching the Kardashians.

He became one of those celebrities who have no particular highlights, but manage to be everywhere. On ads, in bad TV shows, in movies of the week, or doing play-by-play. In the seventies and eighties, Mr. Simpson had one of the world’s most familiar faces. After a while, you began to forget that he’d played sports. Mr. Simpson helped create a new media idea – charting the fall with just as much breathless attention as the rise.

Read more about his life: Long before social media, O.J. Simpson was an influencer

Brian Mulroney

Quick-witted, far-sighted, able to blend impeccable logic with personal charm, former prime minister Brian Mulroney helped revive the Canadian economy, negotiated the most important trade agreement in the country’s history, reformed the nation’s finances, signed ground-breaking environmental agreements and helped lead the global fight against apartheid in South Africa.

For years after he left office, he relentlessly sought to defend his record as prime minister and to put his spin on the latest events, calling journalists to offer his perspective. But he could never satisfactorily explain the hundreds of thousands of dollars he took in cash-stuffed envelopes from a German arms dealer.

The Airbus affair cast a shadow over his reputation that he was never able to shake off. For some, it confirmed their worst suspicions about his time in office : “I apologize and I accept full responsibility for it,” he later told a parliamentary committee, while insisting he had done nothing wrong.

Yet fair-minded history, while remembering that asterisk on his honour, will remember also his courage, how willing he was to take on the most unpopular of causes, and shoulder the resulting opprobrium, if he felt that cause was necessary and just. And it will remember how intensely he fought to bequeath a Canada at peace with itself and proud in the world. If he didn’t quite get there, it was not for lack of trying, or passion.

Read more about his life: Brian Mulroney, Canada’s deal maker, played for keeps

Bob Cole

Bob Cole was a steadier presence in Canadian households than any celebrity or prime minister. Born June 24, 1933, the St. John’s native provided a distinctive soundtrack to Canada’s game. He was known for his signature “Oh baby” call, an expression that was not restricted to hockey arenas.

Mr. Cole was honoured by the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1996 when he won the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award for outstanding contributions as a hockey broadcaster. In 2016, he was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada during a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

Willie Mays

The centre fielder was baseball’s oldest living Hall of Famer. His signature basket catch and his dashes around the bases with his cap flying off personified the joy of the game.

Over 22 MLB seasons, virtually all with the New York/San Francisco Giants, Mays batted .302, hit 660 home runs, scored 3,283 hits and more than 2,000 runs, and won 12 Gold Gloves. He was Rookie of the Year in 1951, twice was named the Most Valuable Player and finished in the top 10 for the MVP 10 other times. His lightning sprint and over-the-shoulder grab of an apparent extra base hit in the 1954 World Series remains the most celebrated defensive play in baseball history.

For millions in the 1950s and 1960s and after, the smiling ball player with the friendly, high-pitched voice was a signature athlete and showman during an era when baseball was still the signature pastime. Awarded the Medal of Freedom by president Barack Obama in 2015, Mays left his fans with countless memories. But a single feat served to capture his magic – one so unstoppable it was simply called, “The Catch.”

Read more about his life: Baseball legend Willie Mays dies at 93

Ian Stirling

In the 1990s, when climate change was often dismissed outright, or thought to be merely about rising temperatures, biologist Ian Stirling showed that global warming was harming polar bears.

In a 1995 study, after tracking bears for a quarter-century, he revealed that they were getting thinner and having fewer cubs. By 1999, he connected adult bear health problems and fewer offspring to climate change and the earlier breakup of sea ice, where they hunt.

Long before it was common practice, he worked closely with Inuit, gathering information from hunters and sharing his discoveries with Indigenous communities, too. He also adopted technology early on, using a computer starting in the 1980s to meticulously write down his field notes, and later embraced tracking animals’ movements with satellite telemetry.

Alice Munro

It was a talent for turning ordinary life into art which made Alice Munro’s international reputation among readers, critics and writers – including the American writer Cynthia Ozick, who called her “our Chekhov,” and her friend Margaret Atwood, who ranked Ms. Munro “among the major writers of English fiction of our time.”

From her first collection of stories, which won the Governor General’s Award, then the country’s major literary prize, Ms. Munro went on to write a novel, Lives of Girls and Women, and close to 150 stories over the next half-century. Her fiction usually appeared in magazines, mainly The New Yorker, before being published in book form, often with a slightly different ending. Her 14 collections amassed national and international awards.

Besides winning the Governor General’s Award three times, she won the Giller Prize (twice), the O. Henry Award, the Man Booker International Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature in 2013 as a “master of the contemporary short story.”

Shortly after her death, readers re-evaluated her legacy after her daughter Andrea Robin Skinner revealed she had been sexually abused by her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, Ms. Munro’s second husband, and that she had been aware of it.

Read more about her life: Alice Munro is gone, but her lives of girls and women continue

James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen – eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, The Lion King and Darth Vader.

The pioneering Mr. Jones, who in 1965 became one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama (As the World Turns) and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center honours. He was also given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theatre was renamed in his honour.

He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humour and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of The Gin Game, having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.

Dame Maggie Smith

Dame Maggie Smith was a perfectionist who turned anxiety into an art form and was hailed as one of the great actors of stage and screen.

One of the few actors to win the treble of an Oscar (twice), Emmy (four times) and Tony, Dame Maggie moved effortlessly between performing Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde on stage to the Harry Potter movie franchise and the hit television series, Downton Abbey. But soul-searching about her art was anathema to the British actor, who jealously guarded her privacy and spurned the trappings of stardom.

Read more about her life: Even before she was famous, I knew Maggie Smith was a treasure

Liam Payne

Liam Payne and his former bandmates – Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson – were catapulted to global fame in the 2010s after Simon Cowell brought them together as One Direction on Britain’s X Factor talent show. The group went on to become one of the best selling boy bands of all time.

His tragic and untimely death sent shockwaves around the world. Mr. Payne was known as the tousle-headed, sensible one of the quintet that garnered a huge international following of swooning fans. In recent years, he had acknowledged struggling with alcoholism, saying in a YouTube video posted in July, 2023 that he had been sober for six months after receiving treatment. In past interviews, Mr. Payne alluded to the gruelling consequences of growing up against the surreal backdrop of the entertainment industry.

Shannen Doherty

Shannen Doherty, who had previously starred in the movie Heathers, gained widespread popularity on 90210 for her portrayal of Brenda, an honour-roll student from Minnesota who struggled to fit in with her classmates in the wealthy zip code. Her character on the show became entwined in a love triangle with Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) and Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth).

People magazine called her “the iconic ’bad girl’ of the nineties,” citing her reputation for partying, turning up late on sets and feuding with actors – and her bosses.

Ms. Doherty had been public about her battle with breast cancer, disclosing in 2015 that she was undergoing treatment for the disease. In 2023, she had a brain tumour removed and revealed that the cancer had spread to her bones.

Roy Megarry

Roy Megarry was a brilliant and mercurial publisher of The Globe and Mail who launched the newspaper’s national edition in the 1980s and cemented its position as the country’s leading newspaper.

Energetic, opinionated, full of ideas, Mr. Megarry was not the kind of publisher content with overseeing the newspaper’s business operations, leaving the editorial side to journalists and maintaining a low public profile. He reshaped the paper’s editorial leadership and took a firm hand in determining its direction, attracting criticism as well as plaudits, especially after he abruptly replaced the newspaper’s editor in chief and managing editor in 1989. He was foundational in transforming The Report on Business into a strong point of what the newspaper does.

Kris Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and an A-list Hollywood actor.

Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such country and rock and roll standards as Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, Help Me Make it Through the Night, For the Good Times and Me and Bobby McGee. Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning For the Good Times or Janis Joplin belting out Me and Bobby McGee.

He starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in director Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 A Star Is Born, and acted alongside Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s Blade in 1998.

Read more about his life: Kris Kristofferson, singer-songwriter and actor, dies at 88

Bob Newhart

Bob Newhart, best remembered now as the star of two hit television shows of the 1970s and 1980s that bore his name, launched his career as a stand-up comic in the late 1950s. The accountant-turned-comedian gained nationwide fame when his routine was captured on vinyl in 1960 as The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, which went on to win a Grammy Award as album of the year.

While other comedians of the time, including Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Alan King, and Mike Nichols and Elaine May, frequently got laughs with their aggressive attacks on modern mores, Mr. Newhart was an anomaly. His outlook was modern, but he rarely raised his voice above a hesitant, almost stammering delivery. His only prop was a telephone, used to pretend to hold a conversation with someone on the other end of the line.

Read more about his life: Comedian Bob Newhart, deadpan master of sitcoms, dies at 94

Norman Jewison

Over the course of that extraordinary career, which stretched from the early 1950s into the new century, Norman Jewison became the most prolific filmmaker ever to emerge from Canada. His 24 theatrical features, which included Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rollerball, A Soldier’s Story, … And Justice For All, The Hurricane, Agnes of God, and Moonstruck, received more than 40 Academy Award nominations and won 12 Oscars.

Together they displayed astonishing range, from light romantic comedies to rousing musicals, slick capers, seething dramas, thrillers, farces, and even a violent sports-and-sci-fi cautionary tale: popular entertainments that had social effect in a turbulent age, when films regularly helped set the agenda.

Perhaps just as consequentially, after establishing himself as a power player in Hollywood, Mr. Jewison returned home to live in the country of his birth, basing his production company here and becoming the godfather to generations of creators by founding the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto, a professional talent development hub for actors, writers, directors and producers, among others.

And though, to his chagrin, he never made a film about the Canadian experience, he believed fervently that Canadians should be able to tell their own stories without having to join the exodus to Hollywood – that a confident, homegrown film industry was essential for the country’s sense of self.

Read more about his life: Norman Jewison, our man in Hollywood

Eleanor Collins

From her birth as a daughter of Black settlers in the early 20th century to recognition as Vancouver’s first lady of jazz, Eleanor Collins was a trailblazer in music and African-Canadian history.

Her role in breaking new ground for women and Black performers earned her membership in the Order of Canada in 2014. Then, in 2022, Canada Post featured Ms. Collins on a stamp, honouring her as the first Black Canadian entertainer – and first female Canadian singer – to star in her own nationally broadcast TV series, The Eleanor Show.

An international career beckoned, but Ms. Collins “never wanted a suitcase life,” as she put it. Committed to her husband and children, she preferred to stay in Canada. Aside from hard-to-find CBC transcription recordings with the Ray Norris and Dave Robbins quintets and with saxophonist Fraser MacPherson, Ms. Collins didn’t leave behind an extensive recording legacy.

But she does appear on She Bop! A Century of Jazz Compositions by Canadian Women, a 2003 CD compilation, covering Ruth Lowe’s I’ll Never Smile Again. And there are numerous clips of her CBC performances on YouTube.

Ruth Westheimer

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist, became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics. Dr. Westheimer never advocated risky sexual behaviour. Instead, she encouraged an open dialogue on previously closeted issues that affected her audience of millions. Her one recurring theme was there was nothing to be ashamed of.

Dr. Westheimer’s giggly, German-accented voice, coupled with her four-foot-seven frame, made her an unlikely looking – and sounding – outlet for “sexual literacy.” The contradiction was one of the keys to her success. But it was her extensive knowledge and training, coupled with her humorous, non-judgmental manner, that catapulted her local radio program, Sexually Speaking, into the national spotlight in the early 1980s. She had an open approach to what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their home.

She soon became a regular on the late-night television talk-show circuit, bringing her personality to the national stage. Her rise coincided with the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when frank sexual talk became a necessity.

Rex Murphy

Rex Murphy, the irascible, irrepressibly proud son of Newfoundland, parlayed a cutting wit and generous spirit into a decades-long career as a broadcaster and columnist. Over the course of his life, Mr. Murphy went from admiring large-L Liberal politics and prime ministers to embracing culture wars and climate denialism.

Mr. Murphy was a long-time contributor to The Globe and Mail whose last column ran in January, 2010. He then moved to the National Post and shifted to the right; the more “woke” the world became, the more conservative were Mr. Murphy’s views.

For many years he also offered strongly worded points of view during commentaries on CBC-TV’s The National. After he left the CBC in 2015, he became one of its most vocal critics. Mr. Murphy did not look like a media star and his language was complex, not written in neat, short declarative sentences. But audiences loved him.

Jimmy Carter

Donald Sutherland

Murray Sinclair

Quincy Jones

John Horgan

Alexey Navalny

Nerene Virgin

Toby Keith

O.J. Simpson

Brian Mulroney

Bob Cole

Willie Mays

Ian Stirling

Alice Munro

James Earl Jones

Dame Maggie Smith

Liam Payne

Shannen Doherty

Roy Megarry

Kris Kristofferson

Bob Newhart

Norman Jewison

Eleanor Collins

Ruth Westheimer

Rex Murphy

Follow related authors and topics

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Jimmy Carter

Donald Sutherland

Murray Sinclair

Quincy Jones

John Horgan

Alexey Navalny

Nerene Virgin

Toby Keith

O.J. Simpson

Brian Mulroney

Bob Cole

Willie Mays

Ian Stirling

Alice Munro

James Earl Jones

Dame Maggie Smith

Liam Payne

Shannen Doherty

Roy Megarry

Kris Kristofferson

Bob Newhart

Norman Jewison

Eleanor Collins

Ruth Westheimer

Rex Murphy

Follow related authors and topics

Interact with The Globe