Jean Freeman

Jean Freeman in a publicity still from the CTV series, Corner Gas. Freeman played the role of Mayor Fitzy Fitzgerald’s Grandma. In real life she was one of the first employees of Regina’s CKCK-TV and later became a CBC Radio on-air personality on Matinee Comment in Winnipeg and Regina. She received numerous honours, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Mayor’s Arts & Business Awards, Woman of Distinction from the Regina YWCA and Trimark Canadian Women’s Mentor Arts and Culture Award. She co-authored Fists Upon a Star: A Memoir of Love, Theatre and Escape From McCarthyism, with the late theatre pioneer Florence Bean James, which was short-listed for a 2014 Saskatchewan Book Award. Her children’s book Terror on Turtle Creek was also short-listed. Freeman was the first actor to join the Saskatchewan branch of ACTRA in 1967 and has been named a Life Member of the union, as well as the Canadian Public Relations Society, the Regina Women’s Network and Regina Little Theatre. In March of 2014 she was named ACTRA’s 2014 Woman of the Year. Each year ACTRA’s Women’s Committee bestows this honour on a woman who has shone both in her artistic and advocacy achievements.