Noreen Isabel Young CM (born September 11, 1952) is a Canadian producer, puppeteer and puppet builder. She grew up in Old

Ottawa South Ottawa South (french: Ottawa-Sud) is a federal electoral district in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is represented in the House of Commons of Canada by David McGuinty, brother of former Premier of Ontario and Ottawa South MPP Dalton McGuinty ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, with her two younger brothers, John and Stephen Brathwaite, then studied drawing and painting at the

Ontario College of Art Ontario College of Art & Design University, commonly known as OCAD University or OCAD, is a public art university located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus is spread throughout several buildings and facilities within do ...

and Design in Toronto. Reading whatever she could, she learned how to build her own puppets and she became known for puppets cast with liquid latex so she could sculpt them, and the faces could move and wiggle and the mouths could open and close. Young began her lifelong career in television puppetry at

CJOH CJOH-DT (channel 13) is a television station in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, part of the CTV Television Network. It is owned and operated by network parent Bell Media alongside Pembroke-licensed CTV 2 outlet CHRO-TV (channel 5). Both stations share ...

/CTV and CBOT/CBC in Ottawa, notably with ''Hi Diddle Day'' (1967–1976) (a show about a female mayor named Gertrude Diddle, in a small town called Crabgrass) and ''Pencil Box'' (1977 - 1979). The former received an Ohio State Award and the latter received

ACTRA The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) is a Canadian trade union representing performers in English-language media. It has 25,000 members working in film, television, radio, and all other recorded media. The org ...

's Best Children's Programme in 1978. She was known for building puppets for shows including ''Today's Special'' and ''Téléfrançais''. She became an independent television producer with Noreen Young Productions Inc., which, with CBC and Telefilm Canada, produced ''

Under the Umbrella Tree ''Under the Umbrella Tree'' is a Canadian children's television series created by Noreen Young that originally aired on CBC from 1987 to 1993. It was produced by CBC and Noreen Young Productions, and later by The Disney Channel, which began airi ...

'', a popular

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French-l ...

children's series that ran from 1986 to 1993 on the CBC nationally and from 1990 to 1997 on the

Disney Channel Disney Channel, sometimes known as simply Disney, is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney General Entertainment Content division of The Walt Disney Compan ...

. It was also dubbed in French for

Canal Famille Vrak (stylized as VRΔK) is a Canadian French language specialty channel owned by Bell Media. The channel primarily broadcasts live-action programming aimed at youth audiences. History Background The youth channel TVJQ () went on the air in ...

and currently streams on the Canada Media Fund's Encore+ on YouTube in both languages. For that show, she was Executive Producer and performed the character "Gloria the Gopher". Young was also the puppeteer for "Dodie", a character on ''

Sesame Park ''Sesame Park'' is the Canadian version of ''Sesame Street'' co-produced by Sesame Workshop and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The series originally functioned as a re-edited version of the original American series, and was named ''Sesam ...

'', the Canadian version of ''

Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Workshop until June 2000) a ...

''. Her puppet characters appeared on many

TVOntario TVO Media Education Group (often abbreviated as TVO and stylized on-air as tvo) is a publicly funded English-language educational television network and media organization serving the Canadian province of Ontario. It is operated by the Ontario ...

productions including Readalong and

Téléfrançais! ''Téléfrançais!'' is a Canadian French language children's television series, produced by TVOntario from 1984 until 1986. The series of 30 ten-minute episodes has become a popular teaching tool, and is used by many educators (especially in Cana ...

and she was featured in the second

Care Bears Care Bears are multi-colored bears, originally painted in 1981 by artist Elena Kucharik to be used on greeting cards from American Greetings. In 1983, the characters were turned into plush teddy bears. The characters headlined their own televis ...

television special, 1984's ''

The Care Bears Battle the Freeze Machine ''The Care Bears Battle the Freeze Machine'' is the second animated television special to feature the Care Bears characters. Made by Ottawa's Atkinson Film-Arts studios, it premiered in syndication in April 1984. The special introduces three new ...

''. Young is known for her caricature puppets of public figures such as former Governor-General

Adrienne Clarkson Adrienne Louise Clarkson (; ; born February 10, 1939) is a British Hong Kong, Hong Kong-born Canadian journalist who served from 1999 to 2005 as Governor General of Canada, the List of Governors General of Canada#Governors General of Canada, 1 ...

, CBC news anchor

Peter Mansbridge Peter Mansbridge (born July 6, 1948) is a British-born Canadian retired news anchor. From 1988 to 2017, he was chief correspondent for CBC News and anchor of '' The National,'' CBC Television's flagship nightly newscast. He was also host of CB ...

and hockey commentator

Don Cherry Donald Stewart Cherry (born February 5, 1934) is a Canadian former ice hockey player, coach, and television commentator. Cherry played one game in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the Boston Bruins, and later coached the team for five se ...

, plus many prominent personalities from her hometown of

Almonte, Ontario Almonte ( ; ) is a former mill town in Lanark County, in the eastern portion of Ontario, Canada. Formerly a separate municipality, Almonte is a ward of the town of Mississippi Mills, which was created on January 1, 1998, by the merging of Almont ...

. In 2018, Young's puppets were featured in an exhibit
Noreen Young, a Puppet Retrospective
, at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum, in Almonte. The 150 puppets from her collection that were exhibited spanned her career from 1967 to 2018. They included Basil the Beagle from ''Hi Diddle Day'' (1967–1976) and 10 puppets which she created for an adult opera, "Sleeping Rough", written by composer Roddy Ellias and performed for the Ottawa music festival, "Music and Beyond" (2018). Many of her puppets now reside in the National Museum of History and at Library and Archives Canada.

Order of Canada

In 1995 Noreen was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada for having "effectively used puppetry to educate children on such crucial issues as safety, nutrition, environmental awareness and addictions."

References

External links

Noreen Young fonds (R16102)
at

Library and Archives Canada Library and Archives Canada (LAC; french: Bibliothèque et Archives Canada) is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is th ...

Noreen Young
at

Internet Movie Database IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Noreen 1952 births Canadian puppeteers Canadian voice actresses Members of the Order of Canada OCAD University alumni Living people People from Almonte, Ontario