The Road to Bard: A Legacy of Shakespeare on Canada’s West Coast

This memoir from Christopher Gaze—the founding artistic director of Vancouver’s Shakespeare festival, Bard on the Beach—traces the always-dramatic story of a life lived on the stage. In the process of the telling, Gaze takes his readers on a tour through fifty years of Canadian theatre.

From his early days as a young lad in an English boarding school to founding artistic director of Bard on the Beach, Christopher Gaze has lived a life in and for the theatre. This memoir traces his journey from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School to Canada in 1975, the beginnings of Bard in 1990, and the build-up of the summer Shakespeare festival into a major event with 88,000 annual visitors. Along the way, Gaze has driven cattle in Montana, waited on tables, acted in countless stage productions, raised massive amounts of money for his beloved festival, and navigated the disastrous COVID shutdown.

In 2025, Bard on the Beach will enter its thirty-sixth season with Gaze at the helm. Written with warmth and lucidity, this memoir presents a half-century of theatre in Canada.