Agnes Martine "Bella" Ouellette (19 October 1886 – 5 December 1945)
was a Canadian
Québécoise actor who worked mainly in theatre and radio in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
, Quebec, Canada.
Biography
Bella Ouellette made her debut acting performance at the age of thirteen alongside Louis Labelle and Blanche de La Sablonnière, famous artists at the time.
In 1902 she made her professional debut in the play "La Passion" directed by at the
Monument-National
The Monument-National is a historic Canadian theatre located at 1182 Saint Laurent Boulevard in Montreal, Quebec. With a capacity of over 1,600 seats, the venue was erected between 1891 and 1894 and was originally the cultural centre of the Sain ...
theatre in Montreal.
Subsequently, Ouellette had a successful career on the stages of Montreal theatres from the early 1900s until the late 1930s. She was the leading actress of the troupe of Julien Daoust.
She married Daoust on 14 February 1906 in Ste-Brigide, Montreal.
Ouellette separated from Julien Daoust in 1919 and created her own theatre troupe in 1922 with , the Ouellette-Demons Troupe.
By the 1920s she was considered one of the ''grande dammes'' of Quebec theatre.
In the early 1930s she was active in the theatre troupe of which was paired with the comedian . The Barry-Duquesne Troupe took up in Montreal's Chanteclerc cinema, which would later be known as the Stella Theatre. The troupe included , , Pierre Durand, , , Jeanne Demons and Gaston Dauriac.
The Barry-Duquesne Troupe, accompanied by the Alouette Quatuor (), embarked for Paris in 1937 to perform Henry Deyglun's ''Vers la terre canadienne'' (). It was the first occasion for a
Québécoise troupe to stage a Canadian play in France.
Faced with the slump in theatre in Montreal in the later 1930s, Ouellette turned to radio and completed her career in early soap operas such as
's ' ().
Ouellette married Fred Barry in 1944.
The archival fonds (collection of works) of Fred Barry and Bella Ouellette are preserved in the Montreal archives centre of the
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec ( 'National Library and Archives of Quebec') or BAnQ is a Quebec government agency which manages the province's legal deposit system, national archives, and national library. Located at the Gr ...
(BAnQ).
References
Sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ouellette, Bella
1886 births
1945 deaths
French Quebecers
Canadian stage actresses
Canadian radio actresses
Actresses from Montreal