Famous people who grew up or lived in Canada

Alexander Graham Bell1893–1922

📍 Beinn Bhreagh, Baddeck, NS B0E 1B0, Canada

I grew up in Edinburgh, where my father taught elocution and my mother was losing her hearing; I would press my lips close to her forehead so she could feel my voice. That, and teaching…

Bobby Orr1948–1962

📍 Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada

Bobby Orr grew up in Parry Sound, a small town on the rocky shores of Georgian Bay in Ontario, surrounded by lakes, pine forests and long, hard winters. His parents, Doug and Arva, were a…

Celine Dion1968–1985

📍 Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada

Celine Dion was born in March 1968 in Charlemagne, a small working-class town on the river just east of Montreal, Quebec, the youngest of fourteen children of Adhémar and Thérèse Dion. The…

Craig Kielburger1982–2000

📍 Thornhill, Ontario, Canada

Craig Kielburger was born in Toronto in December 1982 and grew up in Thornhill, a suburb north of the city, with his parents, both teachers, and his older brother, Marc. In April 1995, when…

Drake2000–2006

📍 82 Walmsley Boulevard, Forest Hill, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Aubrey Drake Graham was born in Toronto in October 1986, the son of Sandi Graham, a teacher, and Dennis Graham, a drummer from Memphis. His parents separated when he was five, and he lived…

James Cameron1954–1971

📍 Chippawa, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

James Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, in August 1954 and grew up in Chippawa, a historic village on the Niagara River just above the falls, now part of the city of Niagara Falls…

Jim Carrey1962–1979

📍 Newmarket, Ontario, Canada

Jim Carrey was born in Newmarket, Ontario, a small town north of Toronto, in January 1962, the youngest of four children of Percy, a jazz saxophonist turned accountant, and Kathleen, a…

Joni Mitchell1954–1964

📍 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort Macleod, Alberta, in November 1943, and after moving around the prairies with her parents, Bill, a grocery manager and former air force…

Justin Bieber1994–2008

📍 292 Gray Street, Stratford, Ontario, Canada

Justin Drew Bieber was born in London, Ontario, in March 1994, and grew up in Stratford, a small city in south-western Ontario best known for its Shakespeare festival. His mother, Pattie…

Justin Trudeau1971–1984

📍 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, ON K1M 1M4, Canada

Justin Trudeau was born on Christmas Day 1971, while his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was Prime Minister, and he came home from hospital to 24 Sussex Drive, the prime ministerial…

Keanu Reeves1970–1986

📍 Yorkville, Toronto, ON, Canada

Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut in 1964 to an English mother, Patricia, and a Hawaiian-Chinese father, Samuel, and his first name is Hawaiian for cool breeze over the mountains. His father…

L.M. Montgomery1876–1911

📍 Green Gables Heritage Place, 8619 Cavendish Road, Cavendish, PE C0A 1N0, Canada

My mother died before I was two, and my father went west, so I was raised by my grandparents, Alexander and Lucy Macneill, on their farm in Cavendish on Prince Edward Island's north shore…

Leonard Cohen1934–1951

📍 Belmont Avenue, Westmount, Montreal, QC H3Y, Canada

I grew up at 599 Belmont Avenue in Westmount, in a comfortable Jewish family on the slopes of Mount Royal in Montreal. My father, Nathan, ran the family clothing business, and my…

Lynn Seymour1945–1954

📍 Vancouver, BC, Canada

I was born Berta Lynn Springbett in Wainwright, Alberta, in March 1939, and grew up in western Canada; my father was a dentist, and my brother became an athlete who ran for Canada. We moved…

Mario Lemieux1965–1981

📍 Ville-Émard, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Mario Lemieux was born in Montreal in October 1965 and grew up in a red-brick house on rue Jogues in Ville-Émard, a working-class, French-speaking neighbourhood in the south-west of the…

Michael Bublé1975–1995

📍 Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

Michael Bublé was born in September 1975 in Burnaby, a suburb just east of Vancouver, British Columbia, the eldest child and only son of Lewis, a salmon fisherman, and Amber, a homemaker…

Neil Young1949–1956

📍 Omemee, Ontario, Canada

Neil Young was born in Toronto in November 1945 and spent his early childhood in Omemee, a small village on the Pigeon River in the farmland of the Kawarthas, about two hours north-east of…

Oscar Peterson1925–1945

📍 Little Burgundy, Montreal, QC, Canada

I was born in Montreal in August 1925, the fourth of five children of Daniel Peterson, who had come from the British Virgin Islands and worked as a porter for the Canadian Pacific Railway…

Pierre Trudeau1919–2000

📍 Montreal, Quebec, Canada

I was born Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau on the 18th of October 1919 in Montreal, Quebec, the son of a French-Canadian lawyer and a Scottish-Canadian mother. Montreal gave me…

Ryan Gosling1980–1993

📍 Cornwall, Ontario, Canada

Ryan Gosling was born in London, Ontario, in November 1980 and grew up in Cornwall, a mill town on the St Lawrence River in eastern Ontario, close to the US border. His father, Thomas, was…

Ryan Reynolds1976–1994

📍 Kitsilano, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Ryan Reynolds was born in Vancouver in October 1976 and grew up in Kitsilano, a leafy neighbourhood of wooden houses on the south shore of English Bay, with beaches, a big outdoor pool and…

Shania Twain1967–1983

📍 Timmins, Ontario, Canada

Shania Twain was born Eilleen Regina Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, in 1965, and grew up in Timmins, a gold-mining town in the forests of northern Ontario, where the winters are long and…

Tate McRae2003–2021

📍 Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Tate McRae was born in Calgary, Alberta, in July 2003 and grew up in this prairie city at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, with its long, cold winters and big skies. Her mother, Tanja, is a…

The Weeknd1990–2007

📍 Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada

Abel Makkonen Tesfaye was born in Toronto in February 1990, the only child of Ethiopian immigrants who had come to Canada in the 1980s. His parents separated soon after he was born, and he…

Wayne Gretzky1961–1978

📍 Brantford, Ontario, Canada

Wayne Douglas Gretzky was born in Brantford, Ontario, in January 1961, the eldest of five children of Walter Gretzky, a telephone technician, and Phyllis. In the backyard of the family home…