Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson presents Douglas Campbell with the Governor General's Performing Arts Award during a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Nov. 7, 2003. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)Douglas Campbell, the Glasgow-born actor who was a stalwart of the Stratford stage and a pioneer of Canadian theatre, has died. He was 87.
Campbell died Tuesday at Montreal's Hôtel Dieu hospital of complications of diabetes and heart disease.
Campbell also had a significant career on the screen, playing the roaming 19th century Ontario Provincial Police inspector Cameron on the CBC's 1979 series The Great Detective.
Campbell joined the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1953, its first season, and had roles in Tyrone Guthrie's Oedipus Rex (1955), Michael Langham's Henry V and John Hirsh's Tartuffe.
He was primarily a character actor and able to create comic roles such as Falstaff, which he brought to the Stratford stage as recently as 2001. He also received critical acclaim for his 1959 portrayal of Othello.
"I am not a very glamorous person. I am not particularly good looking. I've got a big, bulbous nose, I'm on the heavy side," he once said of himself. "I come across as loud and aggressive apparently. I am not the sort of person who attracts people on the ordinary level."
Campbell was also active in developing theatre in Canada.
He founded The Canadian Players in 1954 with Tom Patterson, to give work in the off-season to Stratford actors. The company toured Canada with a mix of Shakespearean and contemporary productions, until the mid-'60s, when it relocated to Toronto as a permanent company. He was also involved with the Piggery, in North Hatley, Que.
His influence was "continent-wide," Antoni Cimolino, general director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, said in an interview with CBC News.
"He really believed in theatre and in its power to change people. He brought that warmth and level of integrity to everything he did ... and he never lost his ability to speak truth to power," Cimolino said.
Douglas Campbell played Falstaff in a 1982 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at Stratford. (Robert C. Ragsdale/Stratford Shakespeare Festival)In his 25 seasons with the festival, extending from 1953 to 2001, Campbell played many memorable roles, among them a "phenomenal" King Lear in 1985.
Cimolino recalled how Campbell put his foot down with then artistic director Richard Monette in 2001, when he was offered the role of Falstaff in Henry IV, Part I.
"He said 'You need to do Part II or you can forget the whole thing,'" Cimolino recalled, adding that Part II is less frequently performed. "He had that drive to do the best in theatre, even if it wasn't convenient."
Campbell also had roles on Broadway, in Paddy Chayefsky's Gideon, and directed an adaptation of Moby Dick there later in his career.
Campbell was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on June 11, 1922, to a postal inspector father and mother who was an amateur actress.
His parents were socialists and pacifists and Campbell declared himself a conscientious objector during the Second World War.
He worked for the Old Vic theatre in London after leaving school and was inspired to become an actor after seeing a production of King John directed by Guthrie, who mentored him early in his career.
Directed Stratford productions
Campbell came to Canada in 1953 to work with Guthrie in Stratford and later moved with him to Minneapolis, Minn.
With his first wife, Ann Casson, who died in 1990, he had four children, including Benedict Campbell, who is now a member of the Shaw ensemble.
In the 1990s, Campbell directed several productions at Stratford, including Julius Caesar and The Alchemist.
In summer 2000, he appeared with another son, Torquil, in the Bard on the Beach production of Henry IV, Part 1, again playing Falstaff. A stage at the Vancouver Bard on the Beach festival is named after him.
He was also part of a theatre advisory committee that established the English theatre at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in the mid-1960s and later a member of the NAC's resident theatre company. He performed there in productions of Mother Courage and Loot.
Campbell's roles on the small screen include appearances in Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story, Charlie Grant's War and Mark Twain and Me.
He is survived by four children from his first marriage, by his second wife, Moira Wylie and two children of his second marriage.
Many of his children went into the arts including Dirk Campbell, television director, Tom Campbell, painter, Beatrice Campbell, a stage manager at the Shaw Festival and Torquil Campbell, actor and lead singer/songwriter of the indie rock band Stars.
He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1997 and won the Governor General's Award for Performing Arts in 2003.
