Explorer and filmmaker James Cameron in front of a capsule, part of the 'Pressure' exhibit at the Royal Canadian Geographic society, in Ottawa in July, 2023.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Film director James Cameron, choreographer Sylvain Émard and singer-songwriter Daniel Lavoie are among the latest class of Canadian performing arts laureates.
The Governor-General’s Performing Arts Awards Foundation announced the recipients of its lifetime artistic achievement award on Thursday. They also include set/costume designer and painter Susan Benson, as well as screen actor and arts executive Tonya Williams.
The distinction is considered the country’s highest honour in the performing arts.
Mr. Cameron, from Kapuskasing, Ont., earned the recognition for a lengthy career of Hollywood films such as The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies, Avatar and related sequels. His epic saltwater romance movie Titanic from 1997 won 11 Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture.
Speaking to The Globe and Mail in 2025 about his latest film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, the director said he doesn’t consider the Academy Awards when making his blockbusters.
“I don’t try to make a movie to appeal to that sensibility. They don’t tend to honour films like Avatar or films that are science fiction,” he said. “Denis Villeneuve, another Canadian filmmaker, made these two magnificent Dune films, and apparently these films make themselves, because he wasn’t considered for Best Director. It’s like, okay, you can play the awards game or you can play the game that I like to play, which is to make movies that people actually go to.”
He has written, produced and directed three of the four highest-grossing films in history.
The 71-year-old auteur made waves last month when he said on In Depth with Graham Bensinger that he recently moved his family to New Zealand because he agreed with its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also described the United States under President Donald Trump as “watching a car crash over and over.”
The other laureates are less known to the public than Mr. Cameron, but all are profoundly accomplished in their fields.
Mr. Lavoie, 76, is a Franco-Manitoban pop-rocker whose 1991 song Jours de plaine is an anthem to many francophones in Western Canada. He was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2022.
Nova Scotia’s Grammy Award-winning soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan.Supplied
Quebec’s Mr. Émard choreographed his first piece in 1987 and founded his company, Sylvain Émard Danse, in 1990. Among his best-known works are his Climatology of Bodies trilogy; Rhapsodie, for 20 dancers; Rumeurs; and most recently, Magnetic Fields, a sextet inspired by quantum physics.
Many know actor and producer Ms. Williams for her long-running role as Dr. Olivia Winters on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless. The 67-year-old London, England, native is also the founder and executive director of Toronto’s Reelworld Film Festival, dedicated to the development of Black, Indigenous and racialized filmmakers.
Scenographer Ms. Benson is also from England, born in Bexley Heath, Kent, in 1942. She trained as a painter before immigrating to Canada, where she has designed for major theatre, opera and ballet companies across Canada, notably the Stratford Festival. The resident of Salt Spring Island, B.C., has represented Canada at five Prague Quadrennial Theatrical Design exhibitions.
The awards will be presented at a ceremony in Rideau Hall in Ottawa on June 5. The laureates will then be celebrated at the National Arts Centre the next day.
Other awards announced include the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts, going to B.C. writer, educator and consultant Sae Hoon (Stan) Chung; and the National Arts Centre Award for extraordinary work in the past performance year, going to Nova Scotia’s Grammy Award-winning soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan.