Frank G. Swanson was born on April 11th, 1917 in Edmonton, Alberta. Frank Swanson was a correspondent for Southam News Service beginning 1955. He was also Associate Editor for the Ottawa Citizen in 1975. Frank Swanson passed away March 6th, 1990 at the age of 72.
Pamela Wallin was born in Moose Jaw and raised in Wadena, Saskatchewan. She attended the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus (predecessor of the University of Regina) where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and political science. Beginning her career as a social worker, Wallin changed course after co-hosting a noon-hour open-line show on CBC Radio. From 1975 to 1978 she held numerous positions with CBC Radio in Regina, Toronto, and Ottawa. Then in 1978 she joined the Toronto Star working in their Ottawa bureau.
Wallin's long association with CTV began in 1981 when she joined the network to co-host its morning show, Canada AM, with Norm Perry. She reported from Buenos Aires in 1982 covering the Falklands War and the subsequent collapse of the Argentine government. In 1984, on the eve of the visit to Canada of the Chinese premier, Wallin and Perry hosted Canada AM from Beijing. Then in 1985 Wallin was appointed Ottawa bureau chief. She was the first woman in Canadian television history appointed to head a bureau. As bureau chief, she also produced and hosted Question Period and regularly anchored CTVs weekend National News program.
Wallin left CTV in 1992 and, for the next three years, co-anchored CBCs Prime Time News with Peter Mansbridge. In 1995 she established her own production company, based in Toronto, which produced such shows as Pamela Wallin Live and Pamela Wallin's Talk TV. In 2000 she hosted the Canadian version of the hit game show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Wallin was Consul General of Canada in New York from 2002 to 2006. She was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 2008 and serves on the Senate's prestigious Foreign Affairs & International Trade Committee and is Deputy Chair of the Defence & National Security Committee. Wallin is also Chancellor of the University of Guelph. She serves on several corporate boards and continues her work as the Senior Advisor on Canada-US relations at the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas in New York.
Pamela Wallin is an Officer of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian honour. She also served, at the request of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on the special Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan.
Ruth Elizabeth Willsey was born on June 25, 1899 in Indianola, Iowa to parents Frank and Lora Willsey. In 1912 her family immigrated to Canada near Weyburn and in 1916 she completed her high school education at Regina College. She went on to teacher training in Weyburn and taught in Ideal, South Dakota near Brough, Saskatchewan and then took further training in Chicago in 1919. In 1921 she married Victor Wilkinson and in 1960leaving the farm, Victor and Ruth moved to Yellow Grass where she had taught grade one for two years before marrying. After Victor died in 1973 Ruth moved back to Regina.
Sharon Butala was born in 1940 and has lived all but six years of her life in Saskatchewan (33 years in the southwest of Saskatchewan) she resides now in Calgary. Sharon has one son and two grandchildren.
She received her B.A. and B.Ed. from the University of Saskatchewan. Besides having been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies she has published sixteen books.
Amongst other honours Butala has won the Marian Engel Award for Women Writers in Mid-Career, 1986 Writers' Choice Award, Saskatchewan Book Awards and Western Magazine Awards. She has also won a Saskatchewan Writers Guild Member's Achievement Award, a Canadian Authors’ Award, Canada 125 Commemorative Medal, Queen's Jubilee Medal and the Centennial Medal. She initiated and chaired a committee to make the Wallace Stegner house available as a Writer/Artist’s residence. Butala has received two honorary doctorates and is an Officer in the Order of Canada.
Saros Cowasjee was born in Secundrabad, India, in 1931. Educated at the Universities of Agra (M.A., 1955) and Leeds, UK, (Ph.D. 1960), he came to teach English at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus, the forerunner of the University of Regina, in 1963. Prior to that he worked as a Lecturer in English at Agra College, Agra 1955-57) and Assistant Editor with the Times of India Press (1961-63).
Cowasjee joined Regina Campus as an instructor and was promoted to full professor in 1971. He retired in 1995 and was appointed Professor Emeritus.
During his long teaching career, Cowasjee spent a semester at Darwin College, Cambridge, a sabbatical as Research Associate at University of Berkeley, California, and another sabbatical as Professor of Commonwealth Literature at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He has presented papers and been a guest lecturer at several universities in Europe, Australia, North America, Fiji and India.
Cowasjee has been a prolific writer. His publications include five books of criticism, two novels, two volumes of short stories and a screenplay. In addition to these he has edited and written introductions to some thirty titles on Indian and Raj fiction. There are also his research articles published as chapters in books and in various journals and magazines in Canada, Great Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere.
Of particular interest in the extensive documentation is his research and writing on the Irish playwright Sean O’Casey and the Indian novelist Mulk Raj Anand. The collection contains substantial correspondence with Anand covering over thirty years. His detailed correspondence with various publishers provides insight into the writing and editing process and the business of book publishing.
Rex Deverell began his working career in 1967 as the pastor of a small Baptist church in southern Ontario. Drama, both religious and secular, played an important role even in those days through acting, directing, writing.
In 1968 Deverell's "The Invitation" won the Playwrights' Award from the University of Western Ontario. He wrote several plays in the following few years. By 1970 he resigned his pastorate and devoted himself to theatre. From 1970 to 1975 Deverell and his family lived in Regina and Toronto. This same period also saw the production of plays for young audiences such as "Sam and the Tigers", "Shortshrift", "Copetown City Kite Crisis" and "Sarah's Play".
In 1975 Regina’s Globe Theatre, southern Saskatchewan's premiere theatre company, appointed Deverell as Playwright-in-Residence. He held this position until October 1989 when he moved to Toronto. "Boiler Room Suite" was produced in 1976. In 1978 this play won the Canadian Authors' Award. It enjoyed great success, became the libretto for an opera, and travelled to Vancouver, Toronto and London, England among other cities.
Deverell has served in various provincial and national organizations, including the Playwrights Union of Canada, the Guild of Canadian Playwrights. He was was a founding member of the Saskatchewan Playwrights' Centre
Beatrice (Bea) Harding was born in Morden, Manitoba. She attended the University of Manitoba and obtained a degree in Home Economics and Education. After marrying William (Bill) Harding she moved to Swift Current and later Regina, Saskatchewan where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in visual arts from the University of Regina. Beatrice taught high school in Saskatchewan for 10 years. In 1961 her husband Bill joined the United Nations presenting the family with opportunities to travel widely. The family travelled and lived in Liberia, West Africa, East Africa, South America and the United States. In 1971, while a resident of the Philippines, Beatrice became inspired by the life and art of Manuel Rodriguez Sr. a graphic artist and instructor with whom she was taking a class. Her book Survival Through Art is about this man and the development of the field of Graphic Arts in the Philippines.
Beatrice kept journals about their stays in Liberia and Siberia, and in Guyana, South America Beatrice wrote articles for the CBC and for weekly newspapers. Later, in London, England Beatrice studied journalism at the Regent Institute of Journalism. She has also written for Asia Magazine and the Winnipeg Free Press. Beatrice is the author of A Centennial History of Glencross Burial Grounds, a booklet about the place where her great-grandparents settled in the 1880’s. In 1999 Beatrice published Top Hats and Head Loads in which she explores the art and cultural practices of the Liberian people and depicts the vast differences between two societies there; the Americo-Liberians of the coast and the indigenous of the Hinterlands.
Beatrice passed away in March 2006.
Dave Margoshes was born in the United States and attended school in New York City and in New Jersey. He received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master's degree in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa.
He worked in newspapers in several American cities before immigrating to Canada in the 1970s; subsequently, he worked on newspapers in Vancouver and Calgary and taught journalism at Calgary's Mount Royal College and Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. Since moving to Saskatchewan in 1986, he's been writer-in-residence in Winnipeg (1995-96) and Saskatoon (2001-02), taught creative writing and journalism at the University of Regina, and has given readings and writing workshops across the country.
Margoshes is the author of two novels, Drowning Man and I'm Frankie Sterne; a novella, We Who Seek: A Love Story; five short story collections, Fables of Creation, Long Distance Calls, Nine Lives, Small Regrets, and Bix's Trumpet and Other Stories, which was a double winner at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including Book of the Year. He has four collections of poetry: The Horse Knows the Way, Purity of Absence, Northwest Passages, and Walking at Brighton; he is also the author of a biography, Tommy Douglas: Building the New Society, and of a junior high school resource book, used in both Canadian and American schools.
Dave Margoshes' stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, and have been broadcast on CBC.
Margoshes has been very active in the writing community in both Saskatchewan and nationally. He received the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Volunteer Award in 2000 for, among other things, helping to organize the Saskatchewan Book Awards (he was the first chairman for this event). He's won several awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Stephen Leacok Poetry Award.
Dave Margoshes currently lives in Regina.
Thelma Poirier grew up on a ranch in southern Saskatchewan and has since spent her adult life on ranches near Fir Mountain, Saskatchewan. She moved to Glentworth 2004 and writes about the land, the animals and vegetation of Southwestern Saskatchewan and ranching. She has published poetry collections titled Grasslands, The Private Hearings (1990), Double Visions (1984), Rock Creek Blues (1998), two books for young readers: Children of the Wood Mountain Uplands, The Bead Pot and a creative non-fiction memoir, Rock Creek. In 2012 Poirier won the Sask Poetry Award for Rock Creek Blues.
Poirier has contributed to portions of the Parks Canada publication, .Field Guide to the Grasslands National Park and has edited several books about ranching, among them: Beyond the Range, Cowgirls: 100 Years of Writing the Range (2002), Grass Roots, Wood Mountain Uplands and A Voice of Her Own (2005).
Other publications include Rodeo Kids (1998), and most recently The Grasslanders: Ranch Stories from Grasslands National Park to be published in 2017.
In 2012 she was the winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the Acorn-Plantos Award.
Charles Torville was born in Bournemouth, Hampshire England, he was the son of Rose Blanchard Torville and stableman father Robert Torville. His parents separated in 1897 and Charles was sent to an orphanage in London and there received a brief education.
In 1899 Charles was able to emigrate to Halifax and in 1910 took up a homestead in the Milestone district in Saskatchewan where he worked and wrote his poetry and songs, one can easily imagine him filling in empty winter evenings with words, seeking to find the magical combination that would bring him fame and fortune through songs and poetry. Charles Torville had many interests in life and searched for personal truth through mystic and secret societies such as the Order of the Eagle and the Lily and the Mystic Brotherhood University.
Charles wrote and published three volumes of poetry including "Song of my Soul" in 1965. He retired to Regina in 1966.
Upon his death he bequeathed $50,000 to the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus, which was used to establish the Torville Honour Scholarship, presented annually to a student majoring in English.
