Canadian poet and Nobel Prize nominee whose works include A Red Carpet For The Sun and The Laughing Rooster. He received both an Order of Canada honor and the prestigious Governor General's Award.
He was born in Romania to Jewish parents. When he was a baby, his family relocated to a poor neighborhood in Quebec.
He was blacklisted in the 1930s as a result of his activities with the Young People's Socialist League.
He married Faye Lynch in 1938; however, the pair divorced after Layton fell in love with Betty Sutherland, who became his second wife and the mother of his two children.
He befriended and mentored poet and Songwriter Leonard Cohen.
