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OTTAWA — Karen Kain used the occasion of her 57th birthday Friday to announce her sudden resignation as chair of the Canada Council for the Arts, effective Monday.
Ms. Kain, named chair for a five-year term in September 2004 by Paul Martin's Liberal government, said in a statement she's leaving to dedicate herself to her full-time job as artistic director of the Toronto-based National Ballet of Canada. Ms. Kain, who shot to international fame in the 1970s as a principal dancer with the ballet, was named its artistic director in June 2005.
Ms. Kain announced her intention to leave Thursday while attending what turns out to have been her last Canada Council board meeting in Ottawa. Vice-chair Simon Brault, director general of Montreal's National Theatre School, will serve as acting chair until the Harper government appoints a successor to Ms. Kain.
In a letter to Canadian Heritage Minister Josée Verner, Ms. Kain said that taking on the National Ballet directorship nine months after the Canada Council post – historically deemed a part time, largely ceremonial function – eventually resulted in a situation where she “found it increasingly difficult to do justice to both positions.”
Karen Kain wipes away tears after being announced as the new Artistic Director for the National Ballet Of Canada during a news conference in Toronto June 23, 2005. Kain announced Friday she is stepping down as as chair of the Canada Council for the Arts. (Mike Cassese/Reuters)
In a statement Friday, Heritage Minister Verner accepted Ms. Kain's resignation “with regret . . . Over the past three and a half years, she has contributed greatly to the successes of the Canada Council.”
The Council marked its 50th anniversary last year under Ms. Kain's aegis and in July 2007 then-Heritage Minister Bev Oda announced that the Harper government was permanently adding $30-million to the council's base budget, thereby raising it to $180-million annually.
Meanwhile, with Ms. Kain's help, the National Ballet last fall was able to report its first fiscal surplus in more than five seasons and to extinguish its accumulated deficit of $630,000.
Kevin Garland, executive director of the National Ballet, said Friday that while Ms. Kain's announcement may have seemed sudden, “she and I have been talking it over for several months now.”
Ms. Kain, she noted, was “frustrated at having to neglect” various aspects of one job at the expense of the other, and vice-versa. Certainly the ballet was “very supportive” of her role with the Canada Council because “it was really good advocacy for the arts.” But the artistic directorship is “a huge job” and “I was finding, she was finding as well, she was struggling very hard to make it all work,” Ms. Garland said.
