Canada’s Most Famous Smokers

William B. Davis

Born: January 13, 1938, Toronto, Ontario

William B. Davis is the Canadian actor who portrayed the iconic “Cigarette Smoking Man” on The X-Files. The character — a mysterious, chain-smoking government operative — became one of the most recognizable villains in television history. Ironically, Davis quit smoking in the 1970s and smoked only herbal cigarettes on set[citation:1].

Before his acting career, Davis was a national champion water skier and a drama professor at Bishop’s University. He later founded the William Davis Centre for Actors Study in Vancouver[citation:1].

Joni Mitchell

Born: November 7, 1943, Fort Macleod, Alberta

Joni Mitchell has been a cigarette smoker since the age of nine. She claims she fell in love with smoking immediately upon taking her first puffs, noting that other children who were smoking broke out in coughing fits while “it felt right to her from the very beginning”[citation:10].

Mitchell’s decades-long smoking habit may explain the unique texture of her voice, which was especially prominent in her later albums. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada and one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the 20th century[citation:10].

Henri Bourassa

Henri Bourassa, the most prominent French-Canadian nationalist of his day, was a noted smoker of tabac canadien (Canadian homegrown tobacco) in clay pipes. After his death, many friends remembered him smoking the strong tobacco and thought this habit memorable enough to record in a collection of reminiscences[citation:2].

When Bourassa sat on stage smoking his short clay pipe as he waited to give a speech at a nationalist rally in 1907, his nationalist oratory had likely already begun with him smoking his pipe of tabac canadien — a fact commented upon by contemporaries[citation:2].

Justin Trudeau

In 2013, then-Liberal leader Justin Trudeau famously admitted he had smoked marijuana five or six times in his life — including once as a sitting Member of Parliament. When asked if it was a mistake, he replied, “No, it wasn’t a mistake”[citation:3][citation:8].

The admission came during an interview with the Huffington Post, in which Trudeau also revealed that his youngest brother, Michel, was charged with marijuana possession shortly before his 1998 death in an avalanche[citation:8].

Trudeau said he last smoked marijuana about three years before the interview, at his house in Montreal, outside on a patio by the pool: “We had a few good friends over for a dinner party, our kids were at their grandmother’s for the night, and one of our friends lit a joint and passed it around. I had a puff”[citation:8].

Ross Rebagliati

Born July 14, 1971, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Ross Rebagliati became the first-ever Olympic gold medalist in men’s snowboarding at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano[citation:4].

Days after his victory, he tested positive for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and was briefly disqualified. The decision was overturned — largely on the basis that marijuana was not on the list of banned substances at the time — and Rebagliati was given back the medal[citation:4].

THC has since been listed as a banned substance by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Rebagliati has since become an outspoken medical cannabis advocate and founded Legacy Brands, a CBD consumables company[citation:4].

Al Howie

Al Howie was a three-packs-a-day smoker when he arrived in Canada from Scotland in the early 1970s, on the run from Interpol[citation:9].

After settling in Duncan, British Columbia, Howie used running to kick his addiction to cigarettes and drugs. He went on to become one of the greatest long-distance runners in Canadian history — completing races that are the stuff of legends[citation:9].

His story was captured in the 2019 biography In Search of Al Howie by New York author Jared Beasley[citation:9].