Westmount

Leonard Norman Cohen, CC GOQ is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet, and novelist. His work often explores religion, isolation,... sexuality, and interpersonal relationships. Cohen has been inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. He is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. While giving the speech at Cohen's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 10 March 2008, Lou Reed described Cohen as belonging to the "highest and most influential echelon of songwriters." Cohen was born on 21 September 1934 in Westmount, Montreal, Quebec, into a middle-class Jewish family. He attended Roslyn elementary school. His mother, Marsha Klinitsky, of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, emigrated from Lithuania while his great-grandfather emigrated from Poland. He grew up in Westmount on the Island of Montreal. His grandfather was Lyon Cohen, founding president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. His father, Nathan Cohen, who owned a substantial Montreal clothing store, died when Cohen was nine years old.
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Douglas G. Shearer was a Canadian-born pioneer sound designer and recording director who played a key role in the advancement of sound technology... for motion pictures. Shearer was born in Montreal, Quebec to a prominent upper class family, but his family fell on hard times after his father's business failed, which ultimately led to his parents' separation. Douglas remained with his father in Montreal while his two younger sisters, MGM star Norma Shearer and Athole, moved to New York City with their mother. Unable to afford university, Douglas Shearer left school, working at a variety of jobs until he visited his sisters, who by then had relocated to Hollywood, California in the early 1920s. He decided to remain there, and found a job at MGM Studios, where he began to pursue an interest in the creation of sound in film. This interest lead to a forty-year association with the film business, in which he was a significant innovator in the development and perfecting of sound technology in motion pictures.
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