Kim Yaroshevskaya dead at 101: She was best known as an actress and children’s entertainer

Russian-born Canadian actress Kim Yaroshevskaya has passed away at the age of 101 and her death was confirmed by her family. Quebec’s Union des artistes (UDA) shared the news of her death on Facebook and wrote: “Kim Yaroshevskaya, who embellished the lives of several generations of young and old children, has left us.”

The statement went on to say that “Many will have been marked by her performance of Fanfreluche or grandmother in Passe-Partout. We will not be able to forget her roles on television, cinema and theater, where she played great playwrights such as Dostoevsky, Tchekhov and Tennessee Williams.”

Kim Yaroshevskaya, who was born in Moscow in 1923, moved to Quebec in Canada at the age of 10. She enjoyed music, drawing and dance classes as a child and went on to join the theatre troupe Le Grenier.

In 1991 the actress was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1991 and a Compagne de l'Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec in 2017. According to CBC, “In an attempt to instill strength in Yaroshevskaya, her mother would give her toy guns for her birthday instead of the dolls she wanted. That prompted the young Yaroshevskaya to wrap up household items and play with them as dolls.

It was maybe those experiences that planted the seeds for Fanfreluche — the role that introduced Yaroshevskaya to Quebecers.”

Éditions du Boréal, an independent Quebec publishing house, paid tribute to Kim Yaroshevskaya on Instagram and wrote: “It is with great sadness that we learned yesterday of the death of Kim Yaroshevskaya. Born in Russia, in Moscow more precisely, a little over a hundred and one years ago, she arrived in Quebec at the age of ten. In her early twenties, she turned to the theater, where she had a very rich career playing the plays of her dear Chekhov, among other favorite authors. Since the birth of television, in the mid-1950s, she brought to life the character of Fanfreluche, which she had created and delighted several generations of children.

“Her two books that we had the pleasure of publishing, La Petite Kim (1998, with illustrations by Luc Melançon) and My Trip to America (2017), allowed us to get to know better an artist and a woman whose extreme delicacy was coupled with a passion for life. which nothing could resist.

“She leaves everyone with the memory of a voice and a story-telling art that knew how to bewitch us like no other.

“We offer our deepest condolences to her family.”