Borden -- A Tower of Strength and Perseverance

Borden wins arts prize

By ELISSA BARNARD Arts Reporter

For Walter Borden nothing compares to being honoured at home.

The Nova Scotian actor, author and activist, named a member of the Order of Canada this year, was thrilled to become the eighth recipient Wednesday of Nova Scotia’s $25,000 Portia White Prize recognizing artistic excellence and achievement by a Nova Scotia artist.

"You know that thing they say," a beaming Borden said as he held the framed plaque to his chest, "when you’re honoured by home — well — that’s just sort of everything."

Born in 1942 in New Glasgow, about to enter his fourth season at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Borden became in 1972 the first black professional actor in Nova Scotia and has been an activist and advocate for black artists as well as a public speaker, teacher and mentor to young theatre artists.

Attending Wednesday’s ceremony in the Red Room at Province House were two artists Borden mentored, actor Bruce Godfree who met Borden on stage when he was 14 and author George Elliott Clarke, whom Borden met when Clarke was in Grade 9.

Borden stayed close to home in naming Truro soprano Jonathan Munro as his Portia White Prize protégé. Munro receives $7,000 while Borden receives $18,000. Borden first heard Munro, 15, singing at his sister’s house.

Munro, who plans to study jazz at Berkeley this summer, thanked his first music teacher Mrs. Mary Shepard. "She always knew what was best for me whether I believed it or not and (thanks to) her late husband Dr. Shepard for making sure I was on time for every lesson. Her husband came and got me to drive me to my lesson."

Borden said his own tenacity, which has taken him from tiny theatres to Neptune’s main stage and stages throughout Canada, comes from his mother.

"I think as strange as it may seem I simply wasn’t capable of doing otherwise, even when I didn’t want to, even when I thought it was crazy, I just had to do what I had to do and that’s my mother."

Borden left his initial career as a teacher of English and Latin to train at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York and has been a professional actor in contemporary and classical theatre, on stage and screen, since making his debut in Vancouver in the 1960s.

Many family members and colleagues were in the Red Room Wednesday as Borden read a poem about the nature of existence from his one-man show Tightrope Time, a frank discussion of male homosexuality. It was a groundbreaking achievement in African Canadian Theatre when he first wrote and performed it in the mid-1980s. Recently revived by Black Theatre workshop, Tightrope Time was published for the first time in 2005.

Now living in Ontario, where he divides his time between Stratford and Toronto, Borden performs this summer at the Stratford Festival in the Governor General Award-winning Harlem Duet. He also starred in the Toronto production of Djanet Sears’s hit.

This year Borden received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award for his artistic achievements and contribution to performing arts and black cultural expression in Canada.

"People ask me, what have you been doing? I’ve been about my father’s business," Borden said as audience members responded "ah huh" as if they were in church. "I have been making manifest through my work my reason for being here."

Premier Rodney MacDonald presented Borden with the Portia White Prize, named after the classical singer from Nova Scotia who overcame adversity to achieve international acclaim on the stages of Europe and North America. Nominations for the 2006 Portia White Prize will be accepted until Sept. 15.

Jurors for this year’s prize were designer Jeffrey Cowling, musical artist Ed Matwawana, actor/director Maynard Morrison and visual artist and past Portia White Prize recipient Charlotte Wilson-Hammond.

Above Walter Borden as Oberon and Adrian Morningstar as Puck

http://www.canstage.com/2002-2003/about/mediapics/dream_images.asp


Well wishes,

F. Stanley Boyd