In Loving Memory of Patricia Hamilton

I was devastated to read that legendary Canadian theatre actor Patricia Hamilton passed away on April 30, 2023 at the end of 86. 

Patricia Hamilton was born on April 27, 1937 in Regina, Saskatchewan and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and London’s Central School of Speech and Drama. She worked as an actor first in the United States, at both the San Diego Shakespeare Festival and the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut, as well as in theatres from New York to Seattle. Fortuitously when she returned to Canada the Canada Theatre as most of us know it, was just burgeoning, and Hamilton was in Jack Cunningham’s See No Evil, Hear No Evil directed by Brian Meeson, and Michel Tremblay’s Forever Yours, Marie-Lou, in Tarragon Theatre’s inaugural season in 1972. She was then in Battering Ram by David Freeman, also at the Tarragon, in 1973, directed by Bill Glassco. Other performances at the Tarragon include Joanna Glass’ Artichoke in 1976, Margaret Hollingsworth’s Mother Country in 1980, and the first English translation production of Michel Tremblay’s Albertine in Five Times in 1985, all directed by Glassco. 

In a 2009 interview with Peter Hinton-Davis at the National Arts Centre she spoke about how exciting it was to return to Canada as a young actor and to see all the brand new Canadian plays being produced in the early 1970s in Toronto at Tarragon, Factory, Theatre Passe Muraille, and the Toronto Free Theatre. She said that she loved doing new plays because she enjoyed the special experience of being the first actor to say the playwright’s words in a new play. After playing Albertine at 50 in Albertine in Five Times, she went on to perform in a number of other Michel Tremblay plays, including Les Belles-Soeurs at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in Toronto, and several more at the Tarragon. She would return to Albertine In Five Times playing Albertine at 70 at the Shaw Festival in 2009.    

She founded Masterclass Theatre in Toronto, in part, she explains to Hinton-Davis in her interview, so that Canadian actors could have a space where they could work on honing their craft first and foremost. It’s very interesting to hear her speak about the early days of theatres like Tarragon and how it was the playwright, the script, that had to be central in the rehearsal process. The entire Canadian theatre movement was centred around the creation of new Canadian plays, telling Canadian stories, and she characterizes that time working on brand new scripts as “actors scrambling to keep up” with the new pages, and the changes, that were constantly being thrown at them in service to the work. Being able to work on more established plays allowed the actors to spend all their time focused just on their acting. She produced a diverse array of plays with Masterclass Theatre, and worked with directors from all over the world. She mentioned to Hinton-Davis that she wanted to work with people who would bring a diverse breadth of experience and cultures to the work. Masterclass did plays by Hungarian playwright Ödön von Horvàth, French playwright Pierre de Marivaux, and Spanish playwright Frederico Garcia Lorca, among others. After four years Masterclass Theatre became the Advanced Actors’ Workshop at the Banff Centre, which was also directed by Hamilton in the same spirit. This was a welcome collaboration with the Banff Centre, as Hamilton says initially Masterclass was funded in part by Patsy’s Garden Café, which she ran out of her yard. Eight of the twelve Founding Artists of Soulpepper Theatre took part in Masterclass Theatre, drawing a clear line between Hamilton’s vision for a Canadian classical theatre that centres the actor’s experience, and the founding of Soulpepper in 1998. 

She also performed in the premieres of Judith Thompson’s I Am Yours (1987), Joan MacLeod’s Amigo’s Blue Guitar (1990), The Arab’s Mouth by Ann-Marie MacDonald, which later became Belle Moral, Homechild by Joan MacLeod and directed by Martha Henry at Canadian Stage in 2006, and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood directed by Kelly Thornton for Nightwood Theatre in 2012, among others. She speaks in depth about The Arab’s Mouth, and her relationship with Ann-Marie MacDonald in this interview with Peter Hinton-Davis. She gives a beautiful reading of bits of it, and I can so vividly hear Ann-Marie MacDonald’s voice in Hamilton’s; it’s amazing.

For thirteen seasons Patricia Hamilton was a mainstay at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake playing Marina in Uncle Vanya, Anna Semyonovna Islayeva in A Month in the Country, Mrs. Higgins in Pygmalion, Flora Van Huysen in The Matchmaker, The Duchess of Berwick in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Mrs. Lathum in The Two Mrs. Carrols, Nurse Guinness in Heartbreak House, Mrs. Helseth in Rosmersholm, Clara Stepaneck in The Magic Fire, Mrs. Culver in The Constant Wife, and the aforementioned Albertine in Five Times, among others. 

It was at the Shaw Festival in A Month in the Country (2007) and Albertine in Five Times (2009) that I had the opportunity to see Patricia Hamilton onstage, and she was absolutely mesmerizing. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She filled every moment of her characters’ journeys with so much depth and nuance; I remember being absolutely fascinated, and assured that I was in the presence of one of the very best. I’ll cherish my memories of seeing her in those shows always.

Of course my introduction to Patricia Hamilton came much earlier in my life, as is the case, I think, for most elder Canadian Millennials, as she played the absolutely indefatigable busybody, the gossip to end all gossips, Mrs. Rachel Lynde in the Kevin Sullivan Anne of Green Gables miniseries (1985-2000), in a subsequent animated series, and on Road to Avonlea (1990-1996). My introduction to Rachel, and Hamilton, was a bit backwards. I must have started watching Road to Avonlea in the first season, when I was six. I remember it was on on Sundays after my bath time, and my mother and I watched it together while she brushed the knots out of my thick, curly hair. Later I watched it in syndication after school as well, which must have been a bit of a trip for my grandmother who was raised in rural PEI not too long after the series was set. Road to Avonlea was my first “water cooler” show; on Mondays my friends and I would discuss the shenanigans that Sara, Felix, and Felicity had gotten into that week. We were hooked. In her fantastic memoir Run Towards the Danger Sarah Polley writes about spending her teenaged years trying to avoid awkward interactions with wide-eyed, naive little Road to Avonlea fangirls, and that would have absolutely been me. When I was in Grade Three my friend Melissa found out that I hadn’t seen Anne of Green Gables and gave me the VHS tape for my eighth birthday. That was when I fully experienced the hilarious breadth of absurd humour and surprising pathos of Patrica’s Hamilton’s iconic Rachel Lynde.      

From the first moment she appears in Anne of Green Gables, desperate to know where her neighbour Matthew Cuthbert (Richard Farnsworth) is going, and in his suit, Patricia Hamilton beautifully inhabits this woman who truly believes in her heart of hearts that everything in Avonlea is her business, is greatly served by both her opinion and especially her seal of approval, and whose judgement comes from a deep-rooted confidence sowed in a Christian upbringing in an insular community, where black is black and white is white and there is nothing but nonsense in the middle. Yet through Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea part of the beauty is watching the ways that Anne Shirley (Megan Follows) encourages (sometimes forces) both Rachel and Marilla (Colleen Dewhurst) to begin to navigate through this middle ground- a journey of whimsy and romance in a child’s imagination, and Rachel and Marilla’s friendship strengthens because of it. It is a beautiful character arc, for both of them, to play women who were very set in their ways, embedded in the traditions of their ancestors, which they never stopped to question or consider, who suddenly, in their later years have their hearts cracked open by one spirited, smart, and exceptionally creative little girl. For generations of Canadians and Lucy Maud Montgomery fans all over the world Patricia Hamilton will always be the *definitive* Rachel Lynde. 

When Kelli Fox was in the The Penelopiad with Patricia Hamilton she knew of my deep love for all things Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea and she emailed me a video from the dressing room where Patricia said, “You’re never safe from surprises until you’re dead,” one of Rachel Lynde’s catchphrases, just for me. It was one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me; completely randomly- it was the best surprise. Silly, yes, but I’ll forever treasure it. 

For me, Patricia Hamilton’s career embodies so much of the Canadian Theatre experience over the last fifty years, from working in Toronto during the first Golden Age of the real Canadian playwright, to travelling across the country working at various regional theatres, and developing an acting workshop at the Banff Centre, to becoming a prominent television actor on the CBC in the 1980s and 90s, to her multiple seasons at the Shaw Festival, this is a best case scenario for someone to become a kind of definitive Canadian actor, to have grown up alongside what has (so far) been the most exciting chapters of Canadian Theatre History.

In typical Canadian fashion “the media” doesn’t cover our stars, especially our theatre stars, in the same way as our American counterparts. I moved away from Toronto in 2011 and wasn’t aware that Patricia Hamilton stopped acting shortly after The Penelopiad. The Toronto Theatre Database sites her last play in Toronto as True West at Soulpepper, directed by Nancy Palk, which ran from March 25 to May 4th, 2013: ten years ago this very day. I had always hoped that I would get to see her onstage one more time, and that our paths would cross in person one day, so I could thank her myself for the video she’d made for me with Kelli. Alas, it was not to be.

Patricia Hamilton leaves behind her son Ben Carlson, an esteemed actor well known to audiences at the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, and her daughter in law Deborah Hay, also an esteemed actor well known to audiences at the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, who was just at Neptune Theatre in Halifax this winter playing Frances in Fall On Your Knees. I send my very deepest condolences to them, and everyone who loves her.