Lisa Rochon
Lisa Rochon is a bestselling author, award-winning architecture critic and civic leader. The author of Tuscan Daughter (HarperCollins) and Up North: Where Canada's Architecture Meets the Land (Key Porter), she has written newspaper columns, essays and cultural commentaries on television and radio.
She is a two-time winner of the National Newspaper Award for her City Space column in The Globe and Mail and is the recipient of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada's President's Award for Architectural Journalism.
Lisa was educated at the University of Toronto and at Sciences Po and L'École du Louvre, Paris. While researching for Tuscan Daughter, Lisa travelled to Florence to retrace the steps of Lisa Gherardini (the Mona Lisa), Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci which is translated into Italian. She was granted rare access to Leonardo's monastery studio in Florence and Windsor Castle to study his original drawings.
As a cultural producer and advocate for equitable public space, she co-directed the reinvention of a historic Toronto boathouse to include large wall murals by Anishinaabe artist Chief Lady Bird and Black artist Jacquie Comrie. More recently she co-produced a large-scale memorial to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls with Indigenous leaders and women artists from across Canada.
The monumental cedar arches were exhibited in Toronto’s Allan Gardens and along pathways in Ashbridge’s Bay. As Chair of the Architect Selection Committee and as design director for the $65 million Canadian Canoe Museum, she led Indigenous and non-Indigenous peer reviews to refine and advance the museum’s design. A passionate chronicler of art and our times, Rochon splits her time between Toronto and an olive grove in Tuscany. She is currently writing a new novel set in 20th-century Paris.