Canadian puppeteer. The modern puppetry revival in Canada may well have started with Rosalynde Osborne’s Punch and Judy Long Ago presented in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1923. This show followed work with Lilian Owen in Gloucester, Massachusetts (United States). In 1935, the Toronto Art Gallery exhibited Rosalynde Osborne’s puppet collection, the first such exhibit in Canada, and, in 1939, she organized the first puppetry conference in Canada. Her company, King Cob Puppets, renamed King Cob Marionettes (1923-1943) when she turned to string puppetry in 1930, worked with both glove puppets and string marionettes. In 1938, The Clouds, based on Aristophanes’ play, was another landmark event. In Quebec in 1942, she performed La Grand’main of Louis Edmond Duranty.

Rosalynde Osborne lectured on puppetry and contributed articles to the Canadian theatre magazine, Curtain Call. She married Clement Stearn in 1947. In 1953, she donated her extensive puppet collection to McGill University in Montreal. The collection includes 171 puppets and over 2,700 periodicals, books and monographs.

(See Canada.)