Leon Dubinsky

Leon Dubinsky is a Canadian actor, theatre director and composer from Sydney, Nova Scotia.

He first became prominent in music with the regional touring band Buddy and the Boys in the 1970s and 1980s,[1] and launched an annual musical stage revue, The Rise and Follies of Cape Breton, in the early 1980s.[2] A song from that show, "Rise Again", became a Canadian pop music standard when the folk music group The Rankin Family recorded it for their 1993 album North Country;[3] their version was a cross-format hit, reaching the Top 20 on Canada's RPM pop and adult contemporary charts and the Top 40 on the magazine's country charts.[4] The song was also later performed and recorded by Rita MacNeil[5] and Anne Murray.

Another musical revue by Dubinsky, the Cape Breton Summertime Revue, toured even more extensively across Canada in the 1990s.[4] In 2002, Dubinsky won the Stompin' Tom Connors Award from the East Coast Music Awards in honour of his contributions to the region's musical culture.[1]

As an actor, Dubinsky is associated primarily with regional stage productions in the Maritime Provinces, including with The Mulgrave Road Co-op, Theatre Antigonish, Theatre PEI, and Factory Lab Theatre. He appeared in the 1987 film Life Classes, for which he garnered a Genie Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 9th Genie Awards.[6] He starred alongside Rick Mercer in the 1988 CBC Television teleplay My Brother Larry,[7] and had a recurring role as Cap McKenzie in the 1990s television series Pit Pony.