John (Peter Lee) Roberts, administrator, cultural policy advisor and scholar related to serious (art) music in Canada, was born 21 October 1930 in Sydney, Australia and became a naturalized Canadian in 1961. After studying piano at the New South Wales State Conservatory of Music in Sydney and voice in London he settled in Canada in 1955. He obtained his MA in Canadian studies from Carleton University in 1988.
His distinguished career in Canadian music programming, began with CBC Winnipeg where he was a music producer from 1955-1957. There, he became closely associated with Winnipeg composer, pianist, and violinist Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté and her husband, Dr. Ferdinand Eckhardt.
His career at the CBC quickly evolved to positions of leadership and greater reach. He was Program Organizer 1957-1965 and Supervisor of Radio Music 1965-1971 at CBC Toronto, Head of Radio Music and Variety 1971-1975 for the English Services Division (ESD), and Special Adviser in Music and Arts Development 1976-1977.
Roberts is credited with developing CBC music festivals which provided exposure to Canadian performers and composers in cities across Canada through performances. Building on these, he established an extensive program of commissions for Canadian composers. He also developed and held CBC talent competitions which have discovered outstanding young Canadian artists and launched important performers and composers on major careers.
Roberts encouraged education on music subjects through radio documentaries on composers and musicians and supported in early commissions of documentaries in the 1960s by Glenn Gould and others. Roberts made the CBC a major producer of art music recordings in Canada through his establishment of a separate recording division which produced the CBC's SM (serious music) series and the Canadian Collection. He also encouraged the development of a CBC distribution system which included commercial sales to a wider Canadian audience through mail order.
Roberts is also credited with bringing Igor Stravinsky to Canada in the early 1960s, which resulted in premier performances and recordings of some of Stravinsky’s late works with the CBC in Toronto at Massey Hall.
While still at the CBC, he was president of the board of the Canadian Music Centre in 1971-1973. When he took the reigns as the operating manager, or director general, of the CMC from 1977-1981, he established the Centredisc label which became a primary vehicle for the recording of Canadian Music.
Roberts has been an active member of numerous arts and culture boards and key committees in Canada and abroad. Roberts was President of the Canadian Music Council, from 1968-1971 and 1975-1977, board member of the Canada Council for the Arts, president of the Les Jeunesses Musicales du Canada, and co-founder of the Esprit Orchestra in Toronto and co-founder in 1984 of the Toronto International Festival. In Calgary, he served on the board of Honens Piano Competition in the early 2000s.
Roberts’s expertise has been utilized on the international level to chair the organization of several international contemporary music festivals and to act as an advisor on broadcasting and communications development in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Roberts was the first chairman 1969-70 of the Radio and Commercial Recording Group of the International Music Centre (IMZ), Vienna, an organization of representatives from broadcasting, recording, film, operatic and other organizations. In Vienna as well, he was vice-president in 1976 of the International Institute for Music, Dance and Theatre in the Audio-Visual Media (MEDIACULT). He also served on the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. In 1973 he became the first Canadian to be elected to the executive of the International Music Council, which he served 1975-1976 as vice-president and 1978-1979 as president, succeeding Yehudi Menuhin. When Canada was host in 1975 to the 16th IMC general assembly, Roberts was the chief planner of the concurrent first World Music Week. He was the organizer 1975-1977 (and chairman 1975-83) of International Music Day.
Roberts was a close colleague and life-long friend of Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould and eulogized him after his sudden death in 1982. Roberts ensured that Gould’s papers were deposited with the Library and Archives Canada and he was the first to publish selected letters of the artist. Roberts is also the Founding President of The Glenn Gould Foundation (1982) which established the prestigious $50,000 Glenn Gould Prize in the area of music and communications.
In the 1980s, he pursued his interest in cultural policy research and development in earnest. He took on a post as senior advisor to the Canadian Radio and Television Commissions (CRTC), working under the chair, John Meisel from 1981-1983. In 1983-1987 he was senior adviser, cultural development for the CBC, at its head office in Ottawa.
In 1986, John Roberts moved into academia, when he became an Adjunct professor and then Dean of Fine Arts at the University of Calgary in 1987, a post he held until his retirement in 1995. At the University of Calgary, he was responsible for the building of the Rosza Centre, the University of Calgary’s music and concert centre, and he also founded another new but short lived record label – Unical. During 1995-1996 he was the first Seagram Visiting Fellow in the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University. He has a distinguished record as a lecturer and published writer in Canada and Europe in the fields of music and communications in the electronic media as well as cultural policy.
John Roberts is the recipient of numerous awards and honours for his service to contemporary art music in Canada and internationally. In 1972, the Canadian League of Composers honoured Roberts with a special award for service to Canadian music. In 1978 Roberts received the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal and in 1981 the Cross of Honour for Science and the Arts from Austria. Also in 1981 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. He received two honorary Doctorates, from the University of Victoria (1992) and the University of Manitoba (1996). In 1996 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Dr. John Harold Thomas Snow (1911 – 2004) LL.D (Hon), R.C.A., A.S.A., was an important contributor to the arts in Calgary. Born in Vancouver, Snow and his family moved to England prior to the First World War. He returned to Canada in 1919, and in 1928 embarked upon a long and successful career as a banker with the Royal Bank of Canada. Following service as a navigator with the RAF and RCAF during the Second World War, Snow began studying at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art (now the Alberta College of Art and Design), which was at the time located in Coste House. It was there that Snow met numerous distinguished members of Alberta’s art community, including Maxwell Bates (1906 – 1980), a man who would become Snow’s lifelong friend and collaborator.
In 1953, two years after Snow purchased a house at 915 18 Avenue SW in Calgary (which is now named after him), Bates and Snow salvaged a press and some lithographic stones from a commercial printer who was no longer using them. They installed the press in Snow’s basement, and began the process of teaching themselves lithography through experimentation, books, and the guidance of commercial printers. A press remains in the basement to this day, although it does not appear to be one of the salvaged presses.
Snow was widely regarded as a master printer. In addition to creating his own work, he printed images for other artists, including Bates, Illingworth Kerr, W. L. L. Stevenson, and Peter Daglish. His willingness to work with other artists seems to have extended into his banking career: it is rumoured that Snow never turned down a loan to a needy artist.
Snow married Kathleen (Kay) Allen (1918-1995) in 1963. As a couple, their impact on the arts in Calgary was significant. In addition to creating a sense of community by hosting dinners for their artist friends, Kathleen—a teacher and librarian—wrote Maxwell Bates : biography of an artist (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1993). Snow and his friend, Quenten Doolittle, also contributed to the arts in Calgary by co-founding New Works, a non-profit society dedicated to the creation of contemporary classical music.
While Snow is perhaps best known for his prints—especially his lithographs and woodcuts—he also created paintings and sculptures. Two of his sculptures are currently located on the property. His work, which is often more concerned with colour than with three-dimensional forms, is seen as part of an important move toward modernism in Alberta. His prints, paintings and sculptures are held in numerous collections, including the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Glenbow Museum, the Nickle Arts Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada, among others. In 1996, Snow’s significant achievements were recognized when he was appointed to the Alberta Order of Excellence. From: http://www.thenewgallery.org/about/john-snow/
Michael Horwood is a Canadian music composer. Born in Buffalo, New York, on May 24, 1947, he studied music composition and theory at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he received both his Bachelor's (1969) and Master's (1971) degrees. In 1971 he moved to Toronto, where he was a professor of music and humanities at the Humber College of Applied Arts and Technology from 1972-2003. Horwood retired from teaching in 2003 and moved to Cowley, Alberta. He currently resides in Tucson, Arizona with his wife, Celia.
Horwood's long career as a composer began in the 1960s. His compositions, of which there are over 70, span many genres, including twelve-tone, electroacoustic, jazz, minimalist, and neo-romantic music, and music for theatre and films. His compositions for orchestra have been commissioned by various organizations, including the Windsor Symphony, Oakville Symphony Orchestra, Mission Chamber Orchestra, Festival of the Sound at Indiana University, The Staten Island Chamber Music Players, Niagara Symphony, Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Horwood has composed for a variety of instruments, including piano, brass, percussion, wind, and variable ensembles.
Notable works include Amusement Park Suite, a 15-minute suite inspired by his hobby of visiting amusement parks that enjoyed several performances in Canada; Intravariations, a piano and orchestra work initiated by pianist and frequent commissioner Mary Kenedi; and National Park Suite, a sequel to Amusement Park Suite commissioned through the Canada Council that drew inspiration from a group of national parks in Canada and the United States.
In the 1970s, Horwood formed an improvisation ensemble named Convergence, for which he played piano and percussion. His CD releases include the 2001 release of Brass-Feast, which contained the works Asteroids and Brass-Fast; and an all-percussion CD, Percussionique recorded from 2007-2008. In July 2012 a 1979 live performance by Convergence was released as a limited edition LP. In 2012 Horwood was the recipient of the American Prize in Composition in the orchestra-professional category for his composition National Park Suite. He has appeared numerous times on the CBC Radio Two series, "Two New Hours".
More information is available on his personal website: http://www.horwoodcomposer.com/
Mary Valentich moved to Calgary from Ottawa in 1976. She worked at the University of Calgary as a sessional instructor before becoming a full-time Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work in September 1977. Valentich has served as Assistant, Associate and Acting Dean of the Faculty, as Acting Director of the Gender Institute from 2000-2001, and as Advisor to the President on Women's Issues from 1991-1994. Valentich became an Professor Emerita in 1998.
Throughout her career, Valentich has been active in various organizations and movements related to social justice. She was one of the founding members of the Ottawa and Hull Rape Crisis Centre, and also a founding member of Calgary's first rape crisis centre, later renamed the Calgary Sexual Assault Centre. She has participated annually in "Take Back the Night" walks, and in the commemoration ceremonies for the Montreal Massacre victims, and was "Dr. Mary" on the radio show Hot Talk in the 1990s discussing various aspects of human sexuality. Valentich is a founding member of the Faculty of Social Work's Diversity Committee, the Stop Racism Committee and has been a member of the Social Justice Encounter since inception in 2007.
Valentich is a Certified Sex Educator and Diplomate in Sex Therapy, served on the Board of the Canadian Mental Health Association and Board of Accreditation, Canadian Association of Schools of Social Work. She advocated for gender neutral language in City Council from 1987 to 2010 when the designation of Alderman was officially changed to Councillor. Valentich is also an original member of the Mayor's Committee on Civic Engagement, and a founding member of the Social Workers for Social Justice group.
In 2018, Valentich was chosen by the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW) for the Glen Drover Award for Outstanding Service, the highest honour that can be bestowed on a social worker.
The Canadian Department of Militia and Defence was created in 1868 through the Militia Act. It oversaw Canada's military activity until 1922 when it was absorbed the new department of National Defence.
Frederick Gerald MacLellan was born in Campbellton, New Brunswick on July 21, 1893. A topographer by trade, Gerald enlisted (service number 167081) in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in late September, 1915 and served in an artillery brigade. After training in Britain he was sent to France on active duty on March 2, 1916. He took part in many battles including the Battle of Vimy Ridge. While recovering from trench fever in hospital in 1917 he received further training as a signaler. By April 2, 1918 he was back in active service in France. MacLellan returned home to New Brunswick just after the armistice in January, 1919.
Simon Wellington Livingston was born in Ontario on the 25th of August 1882. A blacksmith by trade, he enlisted with the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force on March 16th 1916 and fought with the infantry in the 31st Battalion. He died March 21st 1968 in Calgary, Alberta.
Margaret Hare served as a nurse in the First Canadian Expeditionary Force during WWI at the No. 2 Stationary Hospital.
Alice Evelyn Blake, from Calgary, volunteered to serve in the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service in World War II. A postcard of the Royal Canadian Naval College in British Columbia indicates she likely received some training there. When she was called to active service on September 23, 1944, she was stationed in Regina, Saskatchewan. She was sent on draft to Galt, Ontario to receive training as a Probationary Sick Berth Attendant. Luggage tags included in the collection indicate that she was initially stationed at HMCS Cornwallis and was later transferred to HMCS Stadacona in Halifax.