Biography
John Houston

John Houston was born in 1954 and spent the first years of his life in the Canadian Arctic in Cape Dorset on Baffin Island. His early involvement in Inuktitut and Inuit culture has affected his entire life. While attending schools in England, Ottawa, and later Pickering College in Ontario, John continued to think of the north as his home, visiting during several summers to spend time out on the land with Inuit friends. On a summer break from college he took his first job in filmmaking as a coffee boy on the 1973 Paramount Pictures' production of White Dawn, the first novel by his father, James A. Houston.

He graduated from Yale University in 1975, having spent his third year in independent study in Paris, printmaking at Atelier 17 while perfecting his French. In the same year he was approached by artist Lypa Pitsulak to take up the position of Art Advisor to the Pangnirtung Cooperative's printmaking project. He accepted with great enthusiasm since this would afford him the opportunity to live in the north and regain and master the Inuktitut language. He enjoyed this position for nearly five years, bringing out four remarkable annual collections and a documentary film, Art of the Arctic Whaleman, directed by his father for the Devonian Foundation of Alberta.

After Pangnirtung filmmaking called again and he was off on a 20,000 mile trip across the north, casting Inuit for the film Never Cry Wolf (Disney, 1981) on which he worked with Carroll Ballard as First Assistant Director. Many films followed throughout the world, from Singapore to Siberia including rejoining Ballard to film Fly Away Home (Columbia, 1996), however, the north remains his favourite location to this day.

With the proceeds from Never Cry Wolf John established the Houston North Gallery in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia with the help of his mother, the late Alma Houston, who co-owned and operated the gallery until her death in December, 1997. During this period, John and his mother became founders of the Lunenburg Folk Harbour Society, which hosts an annual, intimate, international festival of music of the sea, now moving into its 13th year in Lunenburg, recently designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Now in its 17th successful year John is expanding the Houston North Gallery with an on-line virtual gallery. With Songs in Stone he is making his directorial debut about a subject he has long been familiar with. He's also stayed in one place long enough to do some things he's never had time for - get married and, with his wife Heather, buy a heritage home in Halifax!