* Paula McLaren, former sales and marketing executive at Cambium Releasing, has been appointed director of sales for Toronto’s Breakthrough Films & Television.

* Rainmaker Digital Pictures, a division of Rainmaker Entertainment Group, has hired veteran lab manager Rick Cooper to replace gm Dave Hardon, who is retiring after 40 years in the film business, the last 25 on the West Coast.

Hardon joined the National Film Board as a lab technician in 1958 and worked subsequently at Bellevue Pathe’s Montreal operation and Toronto’s Medallion Film Labs before heading west in 1975 to work with Alpha Cine in Vancouver.

In 1987, Hardon partnered with the principals of Gastown Productions and became president of Vancouver’s second full-service film laboratory, Gastown Film Labs. In 1996, the Gastown companies were acquired by Rainmaker Digital Pictures.

Cooper, formerly a manager at Alpha Cine in Vancouver and Medallion-pfa in Toronto, has been in the business almost as long as Hardon.

* Senior compositing artist Michel Frenette has joined Montreal visual special-effects house Icestorm Digital. Frenette will work on three international ‘superspecials’ for Discovery Channel.

* Groupe tva has named Richard Renaud general manager of Tele 4, the Reseau tva owned and operated affiliate station in Quebec City. Renaud is the station’s former director of sales, and replaces Claude Thibodeau, recently named president and publisher of daily newspaper Le Soleil.

* Adrienne Arsenault has been appointed cbc Washington correspondent, replacing Anna Maria Tremonti, who has joined the hosting staff of the fifth estate.

* Former MuchMusic host/producer Juliette Powell joins CP24 as Money Flow anchor/reporter. *