Arts, Crafts, and Culture in North Hatley

A few highlights

•  North Hatley is renowned for naïve painting, particularly with Le Concours international d’Art Naïf, hosted by the Jeanine Blais Gallery.

•  North Hatley was the birthplace of the l’Encyclopédie de l’Agora, recommended by, among others, the prominent French daily Le Monde, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Figaro, and Science et Vie.

• During the 1970s, poet D.C. Jones and novelist Ronald Sutherland launched Seventh Moon, a poetry event unique in Quebec that brought together Anglophone and Francophone poetry enthusiasts including Roland Giguère, Gérald Godin, Pauline Julien, and Marie-Claire Blais until the early 1990s.

•  In the late 1950s, Gaëtan Beaudin, a pioneer of studio pottery in Québec, founded in North Hatley a major school and workshop where he taught “handmade functional pottery in traditional wood-fired Asian stoneware and raku.” It was active until 1973, and the building still stands today.

•  Hugh MacLennan, a Canadian novelist of international reputation, lived and wrote in North Hatley. (See “North Hatley’s particular role in Quebec’s literary tradition – and English-speaking Quebec,” an address by Graham Fraser, Commissioner of Official Languages, at the North Hatley library on September 17, 2009.

•  Near the village, you can find two lively entertainment venues: La Caravane and The Piggery.