Walter Borden

Walter Borden, one of 20 siblings, is an African Indigenous Canadian actor, activist, teacher, poet, playwright and dramaturg born in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Following studies at Acadia University and Nova Scotia Teachers’ College, Mr Borden began teaching Latin and English in 1964. In 1965 he became a founding member and Regional Supervisor of the Nova Scotia Project and its youth wing, Kwacha House, the preeminent civil rights organization in the country at that time. 

Simultaneously, he assisted in founding the Inglewood Community Players, the first Black Theatre in Nova Scotia. He then journeyed to new York to study at Circle in the Square Theatre School. In 1970, he made his professional acting debut at Vancouver Playhouse Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia. Returning to Nova Scotia in 1972, Mr Borden spent the next thirty years establishing his career at Neptune Theatre, the largest regional theatre in Eastern Canada and where now its Green Room bears his name; serving as Communications Director for the Black United Front, the successor to the Nova Scotia Project; founding the Kwacha Playhouse Theatre; and cofounding the award winning Nova Scotia Mass Choir. He mentored George Boyd, Nova Scotia’s first Black playwright and was dramaturg and a leading actor in his first play, Shine Boy, the story of George Dixon, the world champion boxer known as Little Chocolate and was born in the historic community of Africville in Halifax and is now designated a UNESCO Place of History linked to Enslavement and the Slave Trade.

In 2003, Mr Borden joined the renowned Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, where he not only distinguished himself as an acclaimed actor but also as a driving force behind the Festival’s reassessment of its inclusion practices which resulted not only in its production of the first Black play in its fifty year history, Harlem Duet, but also in the hiring of its first Black director and first Black woman director, D’janet Sears, the playwright of the work. After five seasons at the Festival, Mr Borden continued to perform at all teh major theatres in the country. His primary focus was centered on writing and performing the final iteration of his solo work, The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time, fashioned through many iterations over a fifty year span, premiered at Neptune Theatre in Nova Scotia and completed its run at the National; Arts Centre in Ottawa.

Mr Borden’s mentorship has extended far beyond the theatre community and has touched many from varied disciplines including, from his own Halifax community, Dr. George Elliott Clarke ON ONS, internationally renown scholar, past Poet Laureate of Toronto, Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate and Judge Corinne Sparks, retired, the first B;ack Canadian woman to become a Judge and the first Black Judge in the Province of Nova Scotia. 

Mr Borden has received 2 Dora Mavor Moore nominations for Best Actor

A Dora Mavor Moore for Best Ensemble

2 Montreal English Theatre Awards for Best Actor and Best Ensemble

2 Robert Merritt Awards for Best Actor and the Legacy Award

2 Tyrone Guthrie Awards, Stratford Festival

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Achievement Award

The Portia White Prize from Arts Nova Scotia

He is the recipient of the Order of Canada.

The Order of Nova Scotia

The Queen Elizabeth II Golden, Diamond and Platinum Jubilee Medals

Doctor of Civil Law Hon) Saint Mary’s University

Doctor of Letters (Hon) Acadia University

He is an Elder Advisor at the Birmingham Conservatory, Stratford Festival

The Canadian World Theatre Day Ambassador 2026

An inductee into the Dr William P Oliver Wall of Honor Society