Frederick Ralph Cornelius Penner is a Canadian children's music performer who gives appearances throughout North America. His television series, Fred Penner's Place, aired on CBC in Canada from 1985 to 1997, and was seen in the United States on the cable channelNickelodeon from 1989 to 1992. Penner has received a Juno Award for Children's Album of the Year four times: in 1989, 2003, 2015, and 2018.
Life and career
Penner was born on November 6, 1946, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Lydia Agathe Penner and Edward W. Penner. By the age of four, he had begun making up songs while travelling on the bus with his mother. He taught himself how to play the guitar when he was in grade school, and performed in school choirs and pageants. Through his experiences with his sister Susan, who has Down syndrome, he recognized the therapeutic value of music. Penner received his high school diploma at Kelvin High School, where he took lead roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. After graduating from the University of Winnipeg with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and psychology, he spent time working with mentally and physically challenged children, using music to comfort and entertain. In 1977, he met choreographer and future wife, Odette Graziella Heyn, with whom he started a children's dance theatre company. Penner accepted an offer to do a recording, which resulted in the albumThe Cat Came Back, which launched his career and established him as one of Canada's leading children's entertainers. Currently, Penner splits his time between Winnipeg and Toronto. He has four children by his first marriage to Odette Heyn. He remarried in 2016, to theatre director Rae Ellen Bodie. In 1984, he appeared on the children's television show, The Elephant Show, singing "The Cat Came Back". In 1991, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada for "using music and song to entertain and educate his young audience". In 2011, he was made a Member of the Order of Manitoba. The release date for Penner's new album, Hear the Music with some well-known "guest" singers, is April 21, 2017. He still performs occasionally. Recent dates included November 26, 2016, in Airdrie, Alberta; January 21, 2017, in Regina, Saskatchewan; February 18, 2017, in Fernie, British Columbia; and September 21, 2019, in Lethbridge, Alberta. These confirm what Penner told the Calgary Journal in March 2012:
