Catherine Lough Haggquist is a Canadian actress, producer and entrepreneur. She has more than 140 acting credits in film and television, including three seasons as Inspector Nora Harris on the science fiction television series Continuum and recurring roles in Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Supernatural and Motherland: Fort Salem.
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Early life
Lough Haggquist was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and spent part of her childhood in the Canadian Prairies before her family returned to Vancouver when she was eleven. She is the daughter of a United Church minister and a Jamaican mother. She began acting while attending Eric Hamber Secondary School in Vancouver, later training at Langara College in Vancouver and with private acting studios. Her first set experience came as a stand-in for Holly Robinson Peete on 21 Jump Street, where she met director Peter DeLuise on her first day on set; fellow actress Brenda Crichlow, a high school classmate, subsequently brought her into her own talent agency.
Career
Through the 1990s and 2000s, Lough Haggquist took recurring roles on Highlander and Dark Angel, and appeared in The X-Files, The Outer Limits, Smallville, the television movie Doctor Who (as Nurse Wheeler), Stargate SG-1 and Paycheck. She also held lead roles on the Canadian series The Unprofessionals and Rockpoint P.D.
In 2010, Lough Haggquist appeared as a Soldiers of the One martyr in the series finale of Caprica, and she voiced Roberta Rhodes in the animated series Iron Man: Armored Adventures between 2008 and 2012. She is best known for playing Inspector Nora Harris across ten episodes spanning the final three seasons of Continuum (2013–2015). She also played the Fairy Godmother on Once Upon a Time in 2011, a role that led to her first fan convention appearance, in London in November 2016. In the 2011 film Born to Fight, she played Principal Lee, a role that had originally been written for an older Asian man before she was cast in the part.
Beginning in 2015, Lough Haggquist originated the recurring role of Terry Sternholz, a real estate agent, in Hallmark's Aurora Teagarden film series; when the franchise brought her back for its 2017 installment, the character had been re-written as having run for office and become mayor of the fictional town of Lawrenceton. She went on to appear in seven Christmas-themed television movies, and had recurring roles on Supernatural between 2012 and 2020. In 2019, she appeared in the feature films Endless, alongside Alexandra Shipp and Famke Janssen, and Love & Oatmeal, with Ben Platt.
From 2020 to 2022, Lough Haggquist played General Petra Bellwether, chief intelligence officer of the United States' witch armed forces and mother of cadet Abigail Bellwether, across all three seasons of Freeform's Motherland: Fort Salem. In the show's third and final season, the character was promoted to general following the death of her predecessor. More recently, she has appeared in episodes of Fire Country and Tracker.
Biz Books
Lough Haggquist has said the bookstore grew out of her own teaching practice: early in her career she began developing courses on the structure of the film industry and on how freelance performers could navigate it, and assembled a collection of reference books for her students that became the store's founding inventory. She opened Biz Books in November 1996 in the 650-square-foot basement of the old Gastown Actors Studio building at 136 East Cordova Street in Vancouver, paying $500 a month in rent, as a storefront specializing in film, television, and theatre resources.
After roughly five years of about 20 percent annual sales growth, she relocated the store around 2000 to an expanded, 1,350-square-foot space at 302 West Cordova Street, at Cambie, paying about five times the previous rent. The move coincided with the collapse of Vancouver's "Hollywood North" production boom, which cost the store $100,000 in income; Lough Haggquist responded by expanding into classes and workshops, including a "How To Start..." series covering skills such as media relations and screenwriting. By 2007, the store carried roughly 8,500 titles and was generating close to $400,000 in annual sales, with online sales having begun that November. The store, staffed largely by working actors and run day-to-day for much of this period by manager Bronwen Smith, became a gathering place for the city's film industry; regulars included actors such as Hayden Christensen and Famke Janssen, and director Neil LaBute shopped there while in Vancouver to direct The Wicker Man. Rising commercial rents in Gastown contributed to Lough Haggquist's decision to leave the neighbourhood in 2010, after which the business adopted an "online and on location" model; it continues to operate as BizBooks.net.
Theatre
Lough Haggquist played Condoleezza Rice in David Hare's Stuff Happens at the Firehall Arts Centre in 2008. In June 2015, she played the detective Baylen in Classic Chic Productions' all-female staging of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross at Vancouver's Beaumont Stage, directed by Rachel Peake; reviewers noted that the production cast its women in male dress to portray the play's exclusively male characters. Later that year, she played Shonda Cox, an administrative officer at a small-town jail, in the Canadian premiere of Jason Wells' The North Plan for Upintheair Theatre, a production that went on to win three Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, including Outstanding Production, Small Theatre. Her other stage credits include The Learned Ladies at Western Gold Theatre.
Union and industry service
Lough Haggquist has served multiple terms on the executive board of the Union of British Columbia Performers, including as vice president, and as a national councillor of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. As early as 1996, while serving as a union vice president, she led a $280,000 fundraising drive for the Gastown Studio Theatre Society to purchase its theatre space at 36 Powell Street in Vancouver, aiming to secure the venue for non-profit use. She has taught acting for about fifteen years and has separately mentored emerging actors one-on-one through Women in Film. In September 2020, she became the new owner and artistic director of White Rock's The Drama Class acting school, succeeding founder Michele Partridge, who retained a teaching role at the school, and has separately contributed to training programs at On The Mic Training, the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts, Capilano University, and ActorVan Studios.
Personal life
Lough Haggquist and her husband, Neil Haggquist, a labour relations negotiator who has served as executive vice-president of the B.C. producers' branch of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, marked their thirteenth wedding anniversary in May 2008, placing their marriage in 1995.
Awards and nominations
Lough Haggquist is a producer of Reel Women Seen, a short film that has won numerous awards including the 2018 Jury Choice Award at the Diversity in Cannes Short Film Showcase.
