Anne Butler is named 2011 Beach Citizen of the Year

The Beach Citizen of the Year Committee has selected Anne Butler to be the 2011 Beach Citizen of the Year.

One of her nominators wrote: “Anne Butler has been a contributor to the life of the Beach for many years. She has used her considerable theatrical skills and experience to teach, direct, produce drama, to entertain and to raise funds, most often as a volunteer and always as an enlivening element in the neighbourhood.”

For the past eight years, Anne has been the driving force behind Bard in the Park, which offered free performances of Shakespeare in Kew Gardens. While Anne has retired from the company, it is a tribute to her legacy that the productions will continue.

Community Centre 55 has been a major recipient of Anne’s volunteer efforts. For the last 18 years she has participated in its Share-A-Christmas program, helping to deliver food and gifts to the area’s needy.  For four years she produced and appeared in a production of A Christmas Carol to raise funds for the centre. She has even starred as a witch in the centre’s Halloween Screamatorium.

Many local students of Balmy Beach School and the Beaches Arts Centre will remember Anne as the person “who taught me drama.”

In the larger community Anne served on the board of the Canadian Actors Equity Association for 10 years and was its Vice-President for two years. She was chair of the Theatre Arts Ball for 14 years raising money for the Actors Fund of Canada for sick and destitute performers.

A successful professional actor, Anne has worked extensively in TV and radio, and has played in almost every regional theatre from coast to coast in Canada and in the native England.

Anne will be honoured at a ceremony on Sept. 17 in the Community Millennium Garden (southwest corner of Coxwell and Eastern) in Woodbine Park. The event will get underway at 1 p.m. and all of Anne’s many friends and former students are invited to attend.

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