Picard, Claude, 1932- : Painter. Born in Edmundston, New Brunswick, in 1932, Picard studied painting in Florence, Rome, and Paris in the late 1950s. Picard's works are in the collections of the Canadian Senate, the New Brunswick Museum, the Université de Moncton, and the New Brunswick Legislature along with private and corporate collections in Canada, the United States, and Europe. A recipient of the Governor General's Medal in 1992 for his distinguished contribution to the arts in Canada, Picard was also presented with an honorary doctorate by the Université de Moncton in 1996.
Sylvestre, Guy, 1918-2010 : Canada's second National Librarian was born on May 17, 1918, in Sorel, Quebec. He attended university in Ottawa (B.A., 1939; M.A., 1942) and began his literary career as writer and critic there. By his early 20s, he was already the author of several articles in journals and newspapers, literary critic for Le Droit, and founder of his own journal. Publication of Anthologie de la poésie canadienne d'expression française established him as an intellectual and a specialist in Canadian poetry. In 1956, he became the Associate Parliamentary Librarian, and in 1968 he became Canada's first full-time National Librarian. In his 15 years as National Librarian, Guy Sylvestre oversaw the development of the National Library of Canada as a national resource: he built a dynamic organization whose influence was felt everywhere in Canada, even as he continued to promote Canadian culture through the many cultural and literary associations in which he remained active. He gave the members of his team the task of developing sophisticated technological tools and he worked unceasingly to ensure that they would be made available to every library in the country, and he placed the National Library at the vanguard of large libraries providing international leadership.
