Kate McGarrigle
Canadian singer and songwriter
Kate McGarrigle (February 6, 1946 – January 18, 2010) was a Canadian folk music singer-songwriter, who wrote and performed as a duo with her sister Anna McGarrigle.
She is the mother of singers Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright from her marriage to American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, which ended in divorce.
Early life
Born in Montreal, Quebec, to Irish pianist Francis McGarrigle and French Canadian mother Gabrielle Latrémouille, the three McGarrigle sisters (Jane, Anna, and Kate, the youngest) grew up in the village of Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, north of Montreal. Their family was a musical one on both sides, often gathering around the piano and singing, allowing Kate and her sisters to absorb influences as varied as Gershwin, French Canadian folk songs, Stephen Foster, and composer-singers such as Wade Hemsworth and Edith Piaf. The sisters were formally introduced to music by taking piano lessons from the village nuns.
Career
In the 1960s, Kate and Anna established themselves in Montreal's burgeoning folk scene while they attended school. From 1963 to 1967, they teamed up with Jack Nissenson and Peter Weldon to form the folk group, the Mountain City Four.
Anna, who is 14 months older than Kate, studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal (now part of the Université du Québec à Montréal) in Montreal; McGarrigle studied engineering at McGill University. It was at this time that they began writing songs. Although she sang mostly in English, according to Juan Rodriguez, she and Anna "put Québécois folk music...on the global music map in 1980 [sic] with Complainte pour Ste.
“Kate McGarrigle” enters the record as canadian singer and songwriter. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kate, McGarrigle and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q235084. VIAF identifies the subject as 84242458. The Library of Congress control number is nr91026886. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 2010, 1963 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kate McGarrigle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.