Micheline Charest

Micheline Charest
Born	1953 London, England, U.K.
Died	April 14, 2004 (aged 51) Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Cause of death	Surgical complications
Spouse(s)	(? - April 14, 2004; her death; 2 children)

Micheline Charest (1953 – April 14, 2004) was a television producer and founder (and former co-chair) of the Cinar (later Cookie Jar Entertainment and now DHX Media) television company.

Born in London and raised in Quebec, Charest returned to the UK to attend the London International Film School. In 1976, she traveled to New Orleans where she met her future husband, New Yorker and Tulane graduate Ronald A. Weinberg. While in New Orleans, Charest and Weinberg organized an event for a women's film festival, and worked at distributing foreign films to US theatres. The couple moved to New York and formed Cinar, then a budding film and television distribution company.

In 1984, Charest and Weinberg changed their focus from media distribution to production, and moved the business to Montreal, where they concentrated on children's television programming because of the favorable tax situation for development and distribution of TV shows. During this time, Charest served as either producer or executive producer for dozens of popular animated series for children, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Animal Crackers, Emily of New Moon, Mona the Vampire, and The Wombles. As a production company, Cinar was also involved in the work of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Busy World of Richard Scarry, Madeline, Space Cases, Zoboomafoo, and Arthur. By 1999, Cinar boasted annual revenues of $150 million (CAD) and owned about $1.5 billion (CAD) of the children's television market. The company had become known for quality, non-violent children's programs broadcast in more than 150 countries and was one of the founding partners in the Canadian cable television channel TELETOON.

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