Who's That Ontario-Born Celebrity? Quiz

Answer: Jay Silverheels

Jay Silverheels was born Harold Smith in 1912, on the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve near the city of Brantford. His first career was as a lacrosse player (where he acquired the nickname "Silverheels") but in 1937 he began working as an extra in Hollywood. He appeared in some major movies, including "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "Key Largo" (both 1948), but almost always uncredited.

However, he achieved real fame in the role of Tonto, the Lone Ranger's faithful "Red Indian" companion in the long-running television series, alongside Clayton Moore in the title role. 221 episodes of the show were made between 1949 and 1957, followed by two full-length movies. After the show came to an end, Jay Silverheels made the occasional further TV and movie appearance, but also worked as a salesman and horse-breeder. He died in 1980 following a stroke, at the age of 67.

Answer: Christopher Plummer

Christopher Plummer was born in Toronto in 1929. He has had an extremely distinguished stage career since the 1950s, playing major Shakespearean and other classical roles on Broadway, in the UK, and with the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival. He has also had a successful film career spanning over 60 years, although he had to wait until 2011 to win an Academy Award - "Best Supporting Actor" for his performance in "Beginners", directed by Mike Mills. At 82, he was at the time the oldest actor to win an Academy Award.

However, he is still best remembered for his role as Captain Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music". He has famously gone on record as saying that he disliked the role intensely (finding the character boring), and had not enjoyed making the film at all. Old age appears to have mellowed him slightly, however, and he appeared with surviving cast members on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2010 to mark the film's 45th anniversary.

Answer: Joe Shuster

Joe Shuster was born in Toronto in 1914. His family moved to the USA in 1924, and it was while at school in Cleveland, Ohio, that he met Jerry Siegel. The two of them began drawing comic-book "fanzines" together, and in 1938 their first "Superman" strip was published in the first issue of "Action Comics".

Shuster and Siegel were given a 10-year contract to produce "Superman" stories, but when this came to an end they discovered they had lost all the rights to the character. Shuster's career never really recovered from this, and he was reduced to taking whatever freelance work he could find. He and Siegel launched several unsuccessful lawsuits against DC Comics, which owned the rights to "Superman", and the bad publicity that this attracted eventually led DC to grant them a lifetime pension and restore their byline to the strip. Shuster died in 1992, aged 78.

Answer: Don Cherry

Don Cherry was born in Kingston, Ontario, in 1934. His 20-year hockey career as a player was almost exclusively in the minor leagues, but he went on to have five successful seasons as head coach of the Boston Bruins in the National Hockey League (NHL), followed by one less successful season with the Colorado Rockies.

However, he really achieved the status of Canadian "national treasure" as a presenter on the enormously popular "Hockey Night In Canada" programme. His "Coach's Corner" slot (presented since 1986 with Ron MacLean) has become something of an institution, despite (or more likely because of) his outspoken and often controversial views. In 2004, he was voted the seventh-greatest Canadian of all time in the TV show "The Greatest Canadian".

Answer: Linda Evangelista

Linda Evangelista was born in 1965 in St Catherines, Southern Ontario. She began modelling seriously at the age of 19, and during the ten-year period between 1985-95 she became one of the most famous, and well-paid, fashion models in the world.

She was one of the first so-called "supermodels", along with such contemporaries as Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer. Her famous statement about not waking up "for less than $10,000 a day" was made during an interview for "Vogue" in October 1990.

Answer: Howie Mandel

Howie Mandel was born in Toronto in 1955. He began his career as a stand-up comedian in his home town, but soon became a regular performer at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. He also began to appear on television, and in 1982 was cast in a new TV medical drama named "St. Elsewhere" as Dr. Wayne Fiscus; a role he played throughout the show's six seasons.

During the 1980s and 90s he continued to appear as a stand-up comic, along with various movie and TV roles. In 2005 he began hosting the US version of the game-show "Deal or No Deal", which had originated in the Netherlands in 2000 before being exported around the world. The US show originally ran for four seasons until 2009, before being resurrected in 2018 (with Mandel resuming his role as host).

Answer: James Randi

Born in Toronto in 1928 as Randall James Hamilton Zwinge, James Randi began performing in the 1940s as a stage magician and escapologist, adopting the stage name "The Amazing Randi". In 1956 he set a new world record by remaining underwater in a sealed metal casket for an hour and 44 minutes; the previous record of an hour and 33 minutes having been set 30 years earlier by Harry Houdini.

In the 1970s, he began a new career as a professional "skeptic", debunking the claims of such people as Uri Gellar, who claimed to have paranormal abilities when in fact they were simply using the professional skills of stage magicians. He was a founder-member of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), which dedicated itself to exposing such pseudo-scientific frauds. Another of his groups, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), offered a prize of US $1million to anyone who was able to prove a supernatural ability against agreed scientific criteria. When the challenge came to an end in 2015, no-one had even come close to winning it.

Answer: Alanis Morissette

Alanis Morissette was born in Ottawa in 1974. Her first album, "Alanis", was released in 1991 when she was aged just 16, and her second, "Now is the Time" followed a year later. Both of these were only released in Canada, but her third, "Jagged Little Pill" (1995) became an international hit. The songs in all three albums were co-written by her; the first two with Scott Welch, and the next with Glen Ballard.

Further albums followed at regular intervals, including "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie" (1998) and "Havoc and Bright Lights" (2012). In 2015, a special 20th-anniversary collectors' edition of "Jagged Little Pill" was released. She has won numerous awards for her albums, videos and performances, including multiple US Grammy and Canadian Juno awards.

Answer: Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber was born in London, Southwestern Ontario, in 1994. From 2007, when he was aged 13, his mother started posting videos on YouTube of her son singing various R&B songs, and in 2008 these were spotted by Scooter Braun, who recognised his potential. Bieber released an EP entitled "My World" in 2009, followed by a full studio album, "My World 2.0", in 2010, both of which were very successful.

His career over the next ten years fluctuated between international successes with his music, and numerous controversies, public meltdowns and arrests, all of which helped to keep him in the public eye. From the viewpoint of 2019, the year of his 25th birthday, it remains to be seen how he matures, both as an artist and as a human being.

Answer: Rachel McAdams

Born in 1978 in London, Southwestern Ontario, Rachel McAdams graduated from Toronto's York University in 2001 with a degree in theatre studies. Her first major Hollywood film role was in "The Hot Chick" (2002) with Rob Schneider, followed two years later by "Mean Girls", which was a big success.

She successfully made the transition from "teen movie" actress with roles in the thrillers "Red Eye" (2005) and "State of Play" (2009), and played Irene Adler in two "Sherlock Holmes" movies opposite Robert Downey Jr. She was widely praised for her performance in the 2015 movie "Spotlight" (2015), about the Roman Catholic church child sex-abuse scandal in Boston. She was nominated for an Academy Award in the "Best Supporting Actress" category for her role as investigative reporter Sacha Pfeiffer.