May 2012: John Hobday

John Hob­day: The Retiree Who Never Stops

Our cur­rent fea­tured mem­ber is a great per­son­al­ity of the Cana­dian arts and cul­tural scene. For over half a cen­tury, since he immi­grated to Canada, he has made an enor­mous impact on the sec­tor includ­ing here, at the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts. He has received numer­ous awards for his con­tri­bu­tions and now has an annual award that bears his name, given out to rec­og­nize out­stand­ing arts man­agers. John Hob­day has been a long­time leader in arts man­age­ment, broad­cast­ing, phil­an­thropy, cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship and cul­tural advo­cacy. Never retired, he now advo­cates for the impor­tance of arts in edu­ca­tion and learning.

John’s C.V. reads like an epic list of accom­plish­ments over his years of expe­ri­ence. He began his career in the sec­tor in 1957 when he became the Regional Drama Pro­ducer at CBC Radio in the Mar­itimes. While there he pro­duced and directed over 700 plays. He then applied those skills work­ing as the The­atre Direc­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion Cen­tre in Char­lot­te­town and Admin­is­tra­tive Direc­tor of the Nep­tune The­atre in Hal­i­fax. He had a huge impact on the Nep­tune, increas­ing atten­dance and pulling the insti­tu­tion out of a dev­as­tat­ing deficit. Pos­si­bly his turn per­form­ing in their pro­duc­tion of Major Bar­bara was just the ticket?

John then spent 11 years as the National Direc­tor of our own orga­ni­za­tion, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts, from 1971–1982.

After leav­ing the CCA, John became the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Cor­po­rate Dona­tions at Sea­grams Canada and Chair­man of Sea­gram Sym­pho­nia. There, he expanded the national orches­tra pro­gram and made Sea­gram the lead­ing spon­sor of Cana­dian orches­tras. He then took on the role of the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Samuel and Saidye Bronf­man Fam­ily Foun­da­tion.  In his time there, he helped to develop numer­ous national pro­grams; estab­lish the award for Excel­lence in the Fine Crafts, and the Cen­tre for Cul­tural Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Water­loo. More recently John served as the Direc­tor of the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts from 2003–2006.

Through all this work he has been hon­oured numer­ous times with such pres­ti­gious awards as the Queen’s Sil­ver Jubilee Medal, the Gov­ern­ment of Ontario Vol­un­teer Ser­vice Award, the Hon­ourary Life Mem­ber­ship Award of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Cana­dian Orches­tras, the 1999 Asso­ci­a­tion for Cul­tural Exec­u­tives Award, The Order of Canada and hon­ourary doc­tor­ates from the Uni­ver­sity of Water­loo and the Uni­ver­sity of King’s Col­lege in Hal­i­fax. He was also the recip­i­ent of the CCA’s Diplôme d’honneur in 1999 to rec­og­nize his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to Cana­dian cul­tural life.

It is with his vast expe­ri­ence in mind that we have invited John Hob­day to be a guest con­trib­u­tor to this month’s Mag­a­zine. In his arti­cle he dis­cusses the UNESCO Inter­na­tional Week of Arts Edu­ca­tion, May 21–27 2012, and the changes to the land­scape of Cana­dian arts edu­ca­tion over the last 45 years.