Geoff Le Boutillier

In 1753 Geoff's family, the Boutiliers, came to Nova Scotia from what is now eastern France.  Because the Boutilers were Lutherans,  the British who'd imported them thought they'd be more loyal subjects to the King than those pesky papists, the Acadians, whom they'd just ethnically cleansed from the country.  But these sectarian passions wee soon forgotten.  Within a few generations Geoff's grandfather had married an Irish Catholic and a son was born, Charles Leo Boutilier, named after Pope Leo, who'd died just the day before. 

While studying in France to be a painter in the 1920s, totally oblivious to his Protestant roots, Charles Leo Boutilier made an astounding, if erroneous, discovery - a large family of Le Boutilliers, surely his ancestors.  He dropped the "o" in Leo and, thinking he was setting the record straight, began calling himself Charles Le Boutillier.    Little did he know that by so doing he had condemned his son, Geoff, to a lifetime of explaining that "No, actually I'm just a plain old Boutilier, " an extremely common name on Nova Scotia's South Shore.

brought the gene pool home in 1967.  He helped form Canada’s revolutionary theatre troupe, the NDWT, giving voice to new Canadian drama. After a formative decade in live theatre, he got into film & TV and new media in Alberta.  A founder of one of the country's first film co-ops, FAVA, the Film and Video Artists of Alberta, where he wrote, produced and directed for 20 years. In ‘97 he came home to Nova Scotia where he continues to work in the industry in creative development and as a consultant.

Since the JFK campaign at the age of thirteen, through the integration movement in the early ‘60’s, to radical opposition to the Vietnam War, activism has always been part of his life.   In 2003 he helped found the St. Margaret’s Bay Stewardship Association, a leading East Coast environmental NGO.

He is also an avid gardener, poodle breeder, and full-time cultural advocate.