We are currently planning a celebration of Gilbert’s life.

Date: June 27, 2009
Time: 14:00 (2pm)
Venue: Unitarian Church of Edmonton, 10804 119 Street NW
Facebook page: Celebrating Gilbert Bouchard

Details of this event will be posted as available.

I would like to extend a heart-filled thanks to all of you. Everyone from those that actively tried to comb Edmonton for Gilbert to those that posted a wonderful memory of how Gilbert. Special thanks to everyone that doesn’t know or has met Gilbert, yet still showed their support in various forms to those of us that has.

My sister Suzette has written a biography for Gilbert. I’ve included it after the jump.

Peace.
Steph.

Gilbert Bouchard Biography – Full Version
For Public Use
17 May 2009

Gilbert Alfred Bouchard was born in McLennan, Alberta on July 26, 1961. He was raised in the Franco-Albertan community of Falher, Alberta. In 1979, he moved to Edmonton to study at the University of Alberta’s Faculte St-Jean.

A creative writing and classics student, Gilbert volunteered at The Gateway student newspaper, serving as editor for the 1984-85 term.

In the summer of 1986, he served as an intern reporter at the Edmonton Journal.

In 1987, he moved to Toronto, where he worked as a production manager for Campus Plus, an ad placement agency formed by Canadian University Press.

Gilbert returned to Edmonton in 1990. He joined the Downtown Business Association as a production coordinator and communications consultant before moving on to work as a publicist for the Citadel Theatre from 1993 to 1996.

For the past 10 years, Gilbert has worked as a freelance writer. He wrote about the visual arts for the Edmonton Journal since 2001, and was a regular contributor to Ed Magazine for its three-year duration.

From 1998 to 2005, Gilbert co-hosted and co-produced Acultural Cocktail, a weekly arts program on CJSR, the University of Alberta’s campus radio station.

For the past nine years, Gilbert was the arts correspondent on the CBC Edmonton radio program Radioactive, covering a wide range of events from theatre to movies to opera. More recently, Gilbert appeared regularly on Primetime Alberta’s weekly culture panel for ACCESS TV. In 1995, Gilbert wrote and voiced a CBC Ideas documentary on coffeehouse culture.

Gilbert has written hundreds of reviews, interviews, profiles and commentary pieces for myriad publications, including Where, Galleries West, Western Living, The Globe and Mail, The Ottawa Citizen, Canadian Art and Legacy. At SEE Magazine, he logged a decade of theatre writing and four years as its restaurant and food writer.

Gilbert was also a published poet whose work appeared in numerous magazines including Other Voices, Queen’s Quarterly, NeWest Review, Dalhousie Review, Whetstone, Green’s Magazine, The Prairie Journal and Edmonton Transit’s “Take the Poetry Route” program. In 1992, he served as one of the founding members of The Books Collective and edited one of its first publications, Leaving Marks, by Candas Jane Dorsey.

Gilbert has also hosted dozens of poetry readings, coffeehouses and other literary events, conducted professional writing workshops for students and adults, and was a featured speaker at local science fiction and comics conventions. He curated an exhibit of Edmonton artists for last year’s Mayor’s Evening for the Arts.

Gilbert was a Board Member and youth leader with the Unitarian Church of Edmonton. Recently, he helped to organize a Unitarian Universalist presence at the University of Alberta developing intellectually cutting-edge presentations with a particular popular culture focus). He also served on the board of Metro Cinema in 1992 and 1993.

When Gilbert joined the board of Latitude 53 Gallery in 1997 (he served as president in 2000-01), he submitted a statement that remained true to his most recent work. “My writing explores the inherent always already contradictions of late capitalism,” he wrote. “Journalism/fiction, poetry/prose, rural/urban, French/English, commercial/artistic — I embrace these contradictions of my life and celebrate those tensions and the complex ironies of our post-modern condition and enjoy putting those realities to paper.”

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