Children

The Gift of Reading®

Spokesperson

Marie Turgeon

Actress

 

 

“Underprivileged children want to be read to, learn and discover just as much as any more privileged child. The desire is there, but the means are lacking. This is where the impact of The Gift of Reading® is felt. The book a child receives can transform her or his relationship to reading—even to school, by being a friend, rather than an adversary.I am profoundly convinced that a child’s sense of curiosity can be stimulated by the first special contact with an object like a book that opens up the world of the imagination and inspires self-discovery and the discovery of others and the world.”

 

Biography

Marie Turgeon plays Julia in Providence, a serial broadcast on Radio-Canada. For six years, she had the role of Sandra McLaren in the Radio-Canada TV series Rumeurs. She was also seen in C.A. II, KiKi Tronic, Virginie and 11 Somerset.

On TV

This year, she has been in several TV programs, notably Bienvenue aux dames on V, Caméra Café on TVA and Tactik, a youth program on Télé-Québec. She will also be making appearances in Les Boys and the teen show, Une grenade avec ça?

At the movies

She is on the cast of Filière 13, Patrick Huard’s next feature film, due out this summer. In 2008, she was in Tout est parfait, a movie directed by Yves Christian Fournier that has enjoyed considerable international success.

On stage

Last year, she was in Marc Camoletti’s play, Boeing Boeing, directed by Serge Postigo and produced by Just For Laughs Inc. In 2008, she was in the cast of Silence en coulisses! (Noises Off) directed by Benoît Brière for Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne, and she played in Martin Thibaudeau’s Lucidité passagère, seen at Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui and produced by Théâtre de la zone grise, a young company she belongs to.

After growing up in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Marie studied theatre and communications in Ottawa, where she acted in several plays, including La Cité interdite, La poupée de Pélopia, Les Muses orphelines, French adaptations of Macbeth and The Tempest, and Patrice Desbiens’s Les Cascadeurs de l’amour. After several years with TV Ontario as host of a children’s show and a film magazine program, she has now been living in Montreal almost 12 years.

Marie Turgeon is now in her fourth year as spokesperson for The Gift of Reading®.