Timothy Findley honoured, remembered with blue plaque at 72 Ontario St.

A family member of Timothy Findley laughs next to Andy Bicanic, a member of the Heritage Stratford advisory committee. The two were at the unveiling of the new blue plaque honouring Findley at 72 Ontario St., where the iconic novelist and playwright once lived.

CONNOR LUCZKA, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The list of Timothy Findley’s accolades is a long one – deservedly so – and it grows even today, years after his death.

A 2025 blue plaque honouring Findley, the legendary Canadian novelist and playwright, was presented on Sept. 27. The international plaque program commemorates a link between a location and a famous person, serving as a historical marker. In this case, a plaque honouring Findley will be installed at 72 Ontario St., where he resided on-and-off between 1998 and 2002.

Findley was born in Toronto in 1930, in an upper-class district of the city. He pursued a career in the arts, studying dance and acting.

Before focusing on writing, Findley had a prominent acting career. He was a member of the Stratford Festival’s opening season in 1953, where he first met and performed opposite to Sir Alec Guiness in Richard III. Guiness would become a mentor to him over the years and his lessons proved fruitful even after Findley stopped acting. Findley said his years as an actor had influenced his abilities as a writer.

“It has been the greatest advantage I had when I began writing seriously, to have been an actor,” Findley remarked in 2002. “(It is) the best apprenticeship for a writer. Because you learn language, structure, cadence, rhythm, how to build tension.”

In 1967, he published his first novel The Last of the Crazy People, but it wasn’t until 10 years later when The Wars was published that he garnered critical acclaim. The Wars won the Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction and ushered in a storied career with numerous award-winning novels, plays and short story collections under his belt.

His last novel, Spadework, is set in Stratford, where he was living at what would be the end of his life. The book returns to his early career with the Stratford Festival, depicting the dramatic lives of young actors and Festival City residents.

Although most know Findley for his work as a writer, he was also known as a mentor. He taught at the Humber School for writers and the Humber Summer workshop and was distinguished for his dedication to passing the torch to another generation.

Findley passed away in Brignoles, France (where he and partner Bill Whitehead split their time) in 2002. He was 71 years old.

To learn more about Findley, a page and short documentary video will be posted on the City of Stratford’s website.

Once posted, it can be found at https://www.stratford.ca/en/live-here/blue-plaque-program.aspx.