Latest news with #SookYinLee
CBC
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Juliette Powell, a former MuchMusic host and first Black Miss Canada, dead at 54
Juliette Powell, a former MuchMusic host and the first Black woman to be crowned Miss Canada, has died at the age of 54. Powell, who was born in New York but moved to Montreal as a child with her French Canadian mother, died unexpectedly on June 3 after falling ill with acute bacterial meningitis, according to an obituary posted online. She became a VJ for MusiquePlus, the French-language counterpart to MuchMusic, in 1992 and hosted the channel's the weekly dance music show Bouge de là! while she was a business student at Montreal's McGill University. Powell then moved over to the English channel to host its popular Friday night dance music show Electric Circus from 1996 to 2000 and the Francophone music show French Kiss. She was an economics student at the University of Toronto during her time at MuchMusic. WATCH | Juliette Powell on MuchMusic's Electric Circus: Former colleagues remember Powell Her former MuchMusic colleagues remembered her on social media Tuesday after news of her death emerged. Former host Master T said he was "blessed" work with Powell. "Your bouncy positive energy will be missed. Rest easy, Juliette Powell! Gone too soon!" he wrote in a post on his Instagram story above a photo of Powell sitting on a control room desk with a smile on her face. "Rest in a peaceful celestial party," Sook-Yin Lee, another former VJ and former CBC Radio host, said in an Instagram story post. "Before I was a VJ, I was a fan. Watching MuchMusic as much as I could. Juliette was so cool, so French cool. I enjoyed her range of roles, especially on Electric Circus. Such sad news here," Jennifer Hollett, a former VJ and executive director of The Walrus, wrote on X. After MuchMusic, Powell started as a business reporter for Toronto news channel CP24 and also founded a media and consulting company that led her to produce feature interviews with a range of prominent people, including Nelson Mandela, Steven Spielberg and Janet Jackson. Powell broke ground in beauty pageant world Prior to her being a fixture on Canadian television, Powell broke ground in the beauty pageant world when she was crowned Miss Canada 1989, in October 1988, then represented Canada in the Miss Universe pageant the following May. Her obituary says she was "motivated by a desire to challenge racial biases in beauty pageants." At the time of her crowning, Powell said she was proud to be the first mixed race person to win the pageant. She said that she would "gladly serve as a role model for both white and Black Canadians" and that her win was "a great proof of multiculturalism in this country," according to an article by The Canadian Press published by the Montreal Gazette on Nov. 1, 1988. When she crowned her successor a year later, Powell said the best part of being Miss Canada was seeing how much she had "developed and gained" during her reign. WATCH | The moment Juliette Powell becomes first Black Miss Canada in 1989: A new career path Powell's interests in technology and ethics led her on a new career path after her time as a television host and reporter. She worked in advisory roles for the United Nations, World Bank and World Economic Forum. She studied at Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of arts in sociology. She joined New York University's telecommunications faculty in 2021 and co-founded the New York-based consultancy firm Kleiner Powell International in 2024. She was a keynote speaker as well as a commentator, appearing on CBC News, NBC, BBC and other Canadian and U.S. networks, sharing her expertise on issues like privacy, cybersecurity and unconscious bias in technology. She had two books to her name: 2009's 33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence, and Run a Successful Business Using Social Networking and The AI Dilemma: 7 Principles for Responsible Technology, which she co-authored in 2023. But beyond her career, her friendships were where she had "the most impact," her obituary reads. "Juliette had a magical way of drawing people in with her infectious enthusiasm, and her brilliant intelligence and gorgeous smile lit up every room she ever entered. Her loss is devastating and she will be deeply, painfully missed by so many."
Globe and Mail
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
The summer Sook-Yin Lee spent in a noodle costume changed her life forever
At 17, filmmaker Sook-Yin Lee took a lowly job that nobody else would, as – get ready for this – a 10-foot-tall piece of pasta with a mustache named Mr. Noodle. Was the rocker by night, pasta piece by day humiliated? Demeaned? Did the future artist and MuchMusic VJ file the gig away forever in the embarrassing-job vault? She did not. In this instalment of 'How I Spent My Summer,' Ms. Lee shares how being Mr. Noodle turned into something delicious and eternally filling. I ran away from home as a teenager to become an artist. I was fortunate to meet a supportive queer community with a vibrant and collaborative art scene that encouraged expression. I was in a band, screaming didactic political songs mostly, and we had this gig in Vancouver in an underground nightclub. Literally underground. Above was this unpopular pasta bar. One day I was lugging my gear out of the basement when it caught my eye: this sad-looking, forlorn, empty noodle costume in the window. Kinda like Gumby, but a noodle. He was a 10-foot-tall foam rectangle with big googly eyes, a French beret and a mustache. Even though I didn't have an audience, I was into performance art and social experiments, so he was perfect. I went into the restaurant and asked the guy who ran the place, Lyle, 'Hey – is anyone here the noodle?' Lyle said, 'No, no one will be the noodle.' I didn't care about the money, which was minimum wage, and I didn't really need the job, but I wanted to see what being the noodle was like in society. Robert Munsch's first job in the French countryside turned out to be a stinky situation Artist Christi Belcourt on her first job that paid $17. Not per hour ... just $17. Lyle gave me the lowdown on Mr. Noodle. He said, 'Mr. Noodle is Motown and he walks like this.' It was like a jive turkey walk, super stupid. He wanted me to walk like that and give out menus. I did that in front of the restaurant, where Lyle could see me, but as soon as I was out of view I took on a different noodle personality entirely. I made rules for myself as Mr. Noodle: Never speak words, as then the spell will be broken. I let myself make strange sounds and onomatopoeias, like brrrrrrrreeeeakkkk! or kwauk-kwauk-kwauk! I lost the Motown strut; I didn't give out the menus. I just walked, kinda listless, being a noodle. It was hot in there, and Mr. Noodle was suspended on two strings on my shoulders. I'd stack dishtowels as padding underneath the strings but it still got pretty painful. A lot of people were intolerant or rude. Many told me to move or get out of their way. Children liked Mr. Noodle, though. They'd run up and say hello and want to introduce me to their parents. There'd be the dad, sunbathing on the beach, and I'd deliberately block his sun. Elderly European men were really nice to Mr. Noodle. They'd sit down and talk to him, like really talk to him, regaling them about their day. One day, I got beaten up on Granville Street by a gang of skinheads. They thought Mr. Noodle was funny, so a crowd gathered around and they started pushing him back and forth. Luckily the body was made of foam, so it wasn't physically painful, but I watched sadly from the inside through the mesh face. I stayed in character the whole time as Mr. Noodle got beat up. Every day, I kept a diary of what happened to Mr. Noodle. It resonated with me that he was the ultimate outsider, and I wanted to see who embraced him and who didn't. I didn't have any big plans, but later that summer a friend told me about a film contest she was entering. I decided to enter too, and had one weekend to get a submission ready. It was immediately obvious to me that I'd make Escapades of the One Particular Mr. Noodle. A few months later, I found out Mr. Noodle was one of 10 scripts that was chosen to get made. It became my first legit film. I basically mobilized my neighourhood to be actors. I filmed in my house, remade the Mr. Noodle costume and re-enacted my summer as Mr. Noodle. It got enough attention that I was hired to make another film, and that's how my filmmaking life was born. All of this happened because of Mr. Noodle. Had I not followed my curiosity, had I not taken a low-paying horrible job, had I not found inspiration in him and related his experience as an outsider to mine as a Chinese-Canadian, my life would have been different. Without Mr. Noodle, I might never have become a filmmaker. As told to Rosemary Counter
