Brad Fraser
Brad Fraser once considered becoming a Baptist preacher. Instead, he ended up a playwright – because, as he puts it, the church and the theatre are really one and the same. A native of Edmonton, Fraser first gained notoriety for his 1989 play Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, which has since been produced worldwide and adapted for the screen. Fraser’s works have earned numerous awards, but have also shocked many with their nudity, raw language and frank sexuality.

Tom Caldwell
Tom Caldwell sees himself as a missionary in the world of high finance. The chairman of Bay Street investment firm Caldwell Securities Ltd., he is a devout Christian who believes in putting his money where his mouth is. In addition to structuring his business according to biblical principles, Caldwell works with charitable organizations such as All-A-Board Youth Ventures, which provides opportunities for at-risk teens. www.caldwellsecurities.com

Preston Manning
Preston Manning has been called one of Canada’s foremost advocates of public policy reform. He is also a committed evangelical Christian whose faith plays a part in shaping his political philosophy. First elected to the House of Commons in 1993, Manning was Leader of the Official Opposition from 1997 to 2000. He retired from politics in January of this year, and now contributes his expertise to universities and private think tanks. ww.prestonmanning.ca

Jan Wong
As a teenager in Montreal during the 1970s, Jan Wong fell in love with Maoism and went to China to become part of the Cultural Revolution. Today she is a proud capitalist who owns two dishwashers. One of this country’s most avidly read journalists, Wong went back to China in 1988 as Beijing correspondent for The Globe and Mail. Later she took up a very different beat, puncturing celebrity egos in her wickedly witty “Lunch With” column for the Globe. A best-selling author and National Newspaper Award winner, Wong has earned admiration for asking tough questions in pursuit of the truth. www.randomhouse.com

Douglas Cardinal
Calgary native Douglas Cardinal is Canada's most celebrated architect, best known for designing the magnificent Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec. “Somehow I had this feeling that I was not good enough,” he says. “To put a million square feet of stone across from Parliament is an awful lot of overcompensation for what I had experienced as a child.” Cardinal believes in the importance of creating beauty, and says architecture should serve a spiritual as well as a functional purpose. “Every space should be a spiritual space,” he says.

Catherine Frazee
Catherine Frazee is a writer, educator and researcher who draws from her own experience of disablement in entering ethical and cultural dialogues about citizenship and personhood.  A Professor of Distinction in the Disability Studies program at Ryerson University and Co-director of Ryerson's Institute for Disability Studies Research and Education, she is a committed activist who has lectured and published extensively in Canada and abroad on issues related to disability rights, identity, culture and the disability experience. 

Bluma Appel
Bluma Appel received the Order of Ontario in 1998, the Order of Canada in 1988 and in 2002, she was elevated to an Officer of the Order of Canada. She was also the 2002 Canadian winner of the prestigious international Montblanc Arts Patronage Award for her generous support of the arts in Canada. Her outstanding portfolio of volunteer work includes numerous cultural, social and health care organizations. As Founder of CanFAR, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research, she continues as Chair, raising awareness of the broad and complex issues surrounding HIV infection and AIDS. She was appointed to the OTF Board of Directors in June 2003.

Nino Ricci
Nino Ricci's first novel, Lives of the Saints (1990) was an internationally acclaimed masterpiece, spending a stunning 75 weeks on The Globe and Mail 's bestseller list, winning the Governor General's Award, the W.H. Smith/ Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Betty Trask Award, and the Winnifred Holtby Prize, and was published in over twenty-five countries. Nino Ricci has won the Governor General's Award for Fiction, F.G. Bressani Prize, the Betty Trask Award for Fiction (UK), The Winnifred Holtby Prize (UK), the 1992 Prise Contrepoint Madrineaux (France), the Smithbooks/ Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was a finalist for The Giller Prize. He lives in Toronto.

R.H. Thomson
Raised in an Anglican family in Richmond Hill, Ont., Thomson has drifted away from organized religion, but finds spiritual meaning in his chosen craft. “Storytelling is the lifeblood of who we are as human beings,” he says. In this wide-ranging interview, Thomson also reveals why actors are like yogurt, why compassion is the greatest of all gifts (“like good chocolate”) and why he plans to build his own coffin. “I want to participate in the life that's given me,” he says. “We come into four dimensions very briefly and we have to live in those four dimensions fully.”

Jackie Richardson
Jackie Richardson is Canada's first lady of gospel, jazz and blues. Born in a community near Pittsburgh, she has vivid childhood memories of attending a local Baptist church – sometimes as often as three times a day – with her grandmother, who introduced young Jackie to the gospel music of Mahalia Jackson. She has been a committed spiritual seeker. “Church is a wonderful thing because you can go and be with people, be involved in their lives and share a common belief,” she says. “But the ultimate is learning that you have a relationship with the one higher being that you can talk to anytime, anywhere.”

John Crosbie
“The first thing you have to learn in politics,” says John Crosbie, “is that everybody doesn't love you.” As one of Canada's most fearlessly outspoken political figures, Crosbie has enjoyed ample opportunity to absorb this particular lesson. In a typically candid conversation with Credo , Crosbie recalls his father's difficulties with alcohol, confesses his dislike of political correctness and “professional feminists,” and professes his belief that organized religion, despite its failings, is “useful” to civilization. “They're human institutions, so they've all got their imperfections,” he says. “But I'm a believer in religion.”

Svend Robinson
Robinson speaks candidlyabout memorable chapters of his controversial career. In his Credo interview, Robinson speaks of facing many painful challenges: life with an alcoholic father; the struggle to accept his sexuality (which included a failed marriage and an attempt to “cure” his homosexuality); and the difficult recovery from a disastrous hiking accident that nearly claimed his life in 1997. Although he was baptized in the Lutheran Church, and happily attended Salvation Army services as a child, Robinson subscribes to no particular faith. Robinson's involvement as a politician in First Nations issues exposed him to Aboriginal spirituality – an experience that helped to shape his present beliefs. “I'm ultimately a humanist,” he says. “A humanist who recognizes that there are forces out there a lot bigger than we are.”

Measha Brueggergosman
Raised in a close-knit, devoutly Christian family from Fredericton, N.B., she discovered her passion for music at an early age, and was taught to believe in her own potential. She tells Credo about the profound influence of her parents, speaks with surprising frankness on the subject of sexual abstinence before marriage, and recalls the crisis that challenged her deep belief. Ultimately, she says, making music is for her an expression of faith. “The love of Christ is like a solid rock, unchanging and unmoving,” she says.

Susur Lee
Ever since he opened his first Toronto restaurant, Lotus, in 1987, Susur Lee has been acclaimed as one of the world's finest chefs. In this interview with Credo , he speaks about the influence of his mother (who wanted him to become a priest), his adolescent obsession with Bruce Lee (“he was like a God to me”), the tragic death of his first wife in an air disaster, and his belief in the connection between food and spirituality.

Pamela Wallin
In this interview, she speaks about the centrality of the church in small-town life, her highly public firing from CBC's Prime Time News , her battle with cancer and the simple maxim that guides her in every decision: “The very fundamental lesson my parents taught me was that character trumps genius,” she says. “It's important to be smart … but if you're fundamentally not a decent person, things aren't going to go well.”