Obituary of Edward Stanislaw Slopek

We are saddened to announce the death of Edward Slopek - multimedia artist, performer, musician, painter, writer, teacher, husband and father. He is lovingly remembered by his beloved wife Yasmin and his adult children, Sarah in Halifax, and Zaid and Anesa in Toronto.

Ed’s family immigrated to Canada when he was a child and he spent his formative years among the Polish community in Montreal. Attending Expo ’67 with his brothers was a highlight of his youth. He was the eldest of four siblings and will be sorely missed by Richard and Steve and his sister Diane, and their families, as well as his larger extended family and many friends and acquaintances.

Ed began his teaching career at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and was a founding member and Director of Halifax’s Centre for Art Tapes, one of Canada’s first artist-run exhibition spaces. He then went on to do a Masters in Mass Communication at the University of Leicester (England) and a PhD in Communication at McGill University. He was a professor at McGill University, the University of Calgary, Brock University and most recently in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University (Toronto) for 23 years, where his talents spanned a wide range from the teaching of his wildly popular first year ‘Concepts and Theories’ class to mentoring in the Graduate Program in Communication and Culture.

Ed was gifted with an extraordinary and contagious intellectual curiosity. He demonstrated a lifelong commitment to excellence and was a passionate educator. As a musician he was an accomplished guitarist and pianist and he filled the house with popular sounds: when it came to composing he leaned toward the avant-garde. He surprised us all later in life by becoming a baseball fan and faithfully watched and cheered for the Toronto Blue Jays. Those who knew him will remember him for his easy manner, generosity and humour, integrity, sharp wit, and irrepressible enthusiasm for fun and originality.

His video work and art installations have been exhibited across Canada and internationally and can be found in various collections, including the National Gallery of Canada. His recent work of portraits, entitled “This Mortal Shaking Coil”, dealt with Parkinson’s Disease. His last show, "Five Uneasy Pieces" was accompanied by his original music composition "Into This House We Are Born, Into This World We Are Thrown". It was mounted at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Gallery 310 in September 2025 and was attended by a large crowd of friends and admirers.

As an author, Ed has published on topics including cinema, new media technologies, cloning and digital culture, virtual technologies and consciousness, the body and performance art, and critical social theory. His work revolved around Dada, Surrealism and Semiotics. He was particularly influenced and intrigued by Gertrude Stein, Marcel Duchamp and Charles Sanders Peirce, and he had been composing operas about these last two luminaries. He published 100 Ears – 100 years of Dada, with Parker Kay (2016), and the provocative and engaging essay Bodies of Art: The Shaping of Aesthetic Experience (Quodlibet Elements, 2021).

The family wishes to extend a heartfelt thanks to his devoted care team of visiting friends and family, Joriz and everyone at Houses of Providence, the Neurology Team at the Toronto Western Hospital, and to Bryan for his special attention to Ed.