- Trudi Le Caine
Trudi Le Caine (née Gertrude Janowski), C.M. (1911 –
September 5 ,1999 ) was an arts patron involved with local and national arts initiatives inOttawa ,Canada .Born in
Passau ,Bavaria , she spent her youth in Teplitz-Schönau/Teplice -Šanov, Czechoslovakia before joining her stepfather, Arnold Walter, in Berlin, where he was a music editor and critic for the leftist journals "Die Weltbühne " and "Vorwärts ". After fleeing Germany following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, she lived first in Spain (which she had to leave after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936) and France (where she studied at the Sorbonne) before emigrating to Canada to join her parents. She settled in Ottawa in 1942, where her involvement with "Le Groupe de la Place Royale ",Opera Lyra Ottawa and theCouncil for the Arts in Ottawa led to recognition and awards such as theOrder of Canada , theLescarbot Award and theVictor Tolgesy Arts Award .Though she had no children of her own, she made children's music education one of her causes, helping establish the Ottawa Children's Concerts in 1946 and later becoming a proponent of the Orff Approach (
Orff Schulwerk , also called Music for Children) in music education in the Ottawa area. She also convinced theNational Capital Commission to open theRideau Canal during the winter for skating, which has now become famous as the world's longest skating rink.In her honour, the
Community Foundation of Ottawa-Carleton maintains theTrudi LeCaine Fund .She was close to 50 when she married
Hugh Le Caine , Canadian physicist and pioneer electronic musician.References
*
*
* [http://www.gg.ca/honours/search-recherche/honours-desc.asp?lang=e&TypeID=orc&id=2889 Trudi's Order of Canada citation]
*Trudi LeCaine also taught French at Broadview Public School in Ottawa.
External links
* [http://arts-ottawa.on.ca/awards/awards-tolgesy-en.php The Victor Tolgesy Arts Award]
* [http://www.orffcanada.ca/ Carl Orff Canada Music for Children]
* [http://db.archives.queensu.ca/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll?AC=MENU_QUERY&XC=/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpub.dll&BU=http%3A//archives.queensu.ca/dbtw-wpd/fondsdb/wiki.htm&TN=fonds&SN=LeCaine&RF=HTML+-+Fonds+Display&EF=&DF=HTML+-+Fonds+Display&MR=20&RL=1&EL=1&DL=1&NP=0 Hugh and Trudi Le Caine fonds] at [http://archives.queensu.ca/ Queen’s University Archives]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.