Celebrating Canada’s Linguistic Duality:
Elizabeth Shepherd’s Montréal

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the coming into force of the Official Languages Act, the Canada Council for the Arts is highlighting artists and projects that embody the spirit of a Canadian landscape defined by linguistic duality. The Council has made funding commitments that reflect its position in hopes of giving all artists, including those in official language minority communities (OLMCs), a voice.

An outstanding talent

With a successful career as a pianist and singer spanning more than a decade and including numerous awards, jazz pianist Elizabeth Shepherd is no doubt an exceptional artist. And, like most exceptional artists with several projects under their belt, she eventually reached a point in her career where she wanted to explore her art in a different way and express herself through a different medium. She wandered through Montréal, interacting with strangers and collecting their stories. The seed for her new project was planted.

Exploring new approaches

Elizabeth grew up as an Anglophone in a predominantly Francophone area. Montréal was her home, the place where she felt like she could be herself. And so, over the course of several months, she developed a concept for an album of a new kind. Elizabeth conceptualized her groundbreaking project, Montréal—an ode to the city where she grew up and the people who live there—receiving support under the Canada Council’s New Chapter program. The project is made up of an album, videos, a book, an interactive, virtual reality application and live performances. It is a virtual walk-through of Montréal informed by stories collected by Elizabeth herself from a number of its residents.

Using language to reach audiences

Though Elizabeth, an Anglophone in a French-speaking area, had at times been made to feel like an outsider in her own hometown, being asked where she was originally from, she was determined to welcome everyone into her project, destroying language barriers by writing songs in both English and French, in proportion to Montréal’s linguistic makeup, and ensuring that the application, film, music and book were available in both official languages. And her gamble has paid off—Montréal has been lauded by English- and French-language media outlets alike.