Sunlit Arbour

Gordon Adaskin was born on June 7, 1931, in Toronto, Ontario. He was the brother of musician Harry Adaskin. After the death of his father when Gordon was five years old, he was adopted by Harry and his wife Frances Adaskin, in accordance with his father's dying wish. Although his birth mother, Rifka, was still alive, she agreed to the adoption. Gordon moved to Vancouver in 1946 and attended University Hill Junior School, leaving before his final year to attend the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design).

Adaskin graduated from the Vancouver School of Art with an Honours Diploma in Drawing and Painting in 1952. He subsequently toured Europe, studying the museums and galleries of Italy. He graduated from the Provincial Normal School in Vancouver in 1955. After his European travels, Adaskin taught in the Vancouver school system and at the Alberta College of Art in Calgary. He also taught at the Banff School of Fine Art before being hired to teach at the University of Manitoba in the Faculty of Architecture, where he remained for over twenty-five years until his retirement in 1993.

Adaskin was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1976. His artwork was regularly exhibited at the University of Manitoba as well as in touring exhibitions, including two that visited Vancouver. In addition to his work as a visual artist, Adaskin was an interviewer and commentator on art and artists, conducting interviews with leading Canadian artists of the mid-twentieth century including B.C. Binning and Jack Shadbolt.

In the early 1990s, Adaskin moved to Gibsons, British Columbia, where he married his second wife, Jan Busch, in April 1997. He died at home in Gibsons on December 28, 2001. He was survived by his wife Jan, daughter Susan M. Adaskin, son Jon Adaskin, brother Murray, and special niece Susan F. Adaskin, and was predeceased by his birth parents Samuel and Rifka Adaskin, adoptive parents Harry and Frances Adaskin, brothers John and Leslie Adaskin, and sister Mollie Krivosha.