Rose-Alma Ouellette also known by her stage name La Poune was a Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

 actress, comedian, theatre manager and artistic director

Artistic director

An artistic director is the executive of an arts organization, particularly in a theatre company, that handles the organization's artistic direction. He or she is generally a producer and director, but not in the sense of a mogul, since the organization is generally a non-profit organization...

. In the later part of her career, she appeared in film and on television, but she is most remembered for her work on stage. Ouellette was a leading figure of the very popular burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

 and vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 genres which dominated the theatrical scene in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 from the 1920s until the 1960s. From 1936 to 1953, Ouellette was in charge of the Théâtre National and in the late 60s and early 70s, she worked with Gilles Latulippe

Gilles Latulippe

Gilles Latulippe is a Québécois actor, comedian and theatre director and manager. Latulippe is a central figure in the history of comic theatre in Quebec. In 1998, he was named Quebec's favorite actor by the daily tabloid Le Journal de Montréal.-Career:In the late 1950s, Latulippe joined Yvon...

 at the Théâtre des Variétés of Montreal. Her 75 year career eventually made her a cultural icon

Cultural icon

A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group...

in Quebec.