Gordon Pinsent CC FRSC was a Canadian actor, writer, director, and singer. He was known for his roles in numerous productions, including Away from Her, The Rowdyman, John and the Missus, A Gift to Last, Due South, The Red Green Show, and Quentin Durgens, M.P.  He was the voice of King Babar in the Babar the Elephant television and film productions from 1989 to 2015.

Pinsent, the youngest of six children, was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, in 1930. His mother, Florence "Flossie" (née Cooper), was originally from Clifton, Newfoundland, and his father, Stephen Arthur Pinsent, was a paper-mill worker and cobbler originally from Dildo, Newfoundland. Gordon was a self-described "awkward child" who suffered from rickets.

Pinsent began acting on stage in the 1940s at the age of seventeen. He soon took on roles in radio drama on the CBC, and he later moved into television and film as well. In the early 1950s, he took a break from acting and joined the Canadian Army, serving for approximately four years as a private in the Royal Canadian Regiment.

In 1979, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1998. In 2006, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2007, it was announced that Pinsent would receive a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame.

In 1997, Gordon won the Earle Grey Award for lifetime achievement in television.
He received an LL.D. from the University of Prince Edward Island in 1975, and honorary doctorates from Queen's University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Lakehead University (2008), and the University of Windsor (2012).

Pinsent received a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award in 2004, Canada's highest honour in the performing arts.

It was on July 12, 2005, in his hometown of Grand Falls–Windsor, and in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday, that the Arts & Culture Centre was renamed the Gordon Pinsent Centre for the Arts.

On September 25, 2008, at a "Newfoundland and Labrador–Inspired Evening" at The Windsor Arms Hotel in Toronto, the Company Theatre presented Pinsent with the inaugural Gordon Pinsent Award of Excellence.

Pinsent received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.

Throughout his career, Gordon Pinsent received acting and writing awards, which included five Gemini Awards, three Genie Awards, two ACTRA Awards, and a Dora Award.