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March 18, 2022

Almanac of Story Tellers: Heather Robertson

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books

Today is the story of March 19th
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    It is the 78th day of the year, leaving 287 days remaining in 2022.
   
    On this date in 1942, the Canadian author, Heather Robertson, was born in Winnipeg.

    She told her stories as a crusading journalist, a magazine writer, a novelist, and in several books of non fiction.

    Robertson has been described as a smart contrarian supported by solid reporting. An editor said she was "steely, even prickly."

    She won the Books in Canada Best First Novel Prize for her 1983 book, Willie, a Romance, based on the life of former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. A dozen years later, she won the Canadian National Business Book Award for Driving Force, about R.S. McLaughlin, the founder of General Motors of Canada.

    Her first book, Reservations are for Indians, was written after she recived a grant to study the people of the First Nations of Canada. It is described as a sympathetic yet detached portrait written by a person who combined  "the skills of a novelist with those of an accomplished journalist" and a "landmark study of aboriginal affairs."

    In all, Robertson wrote 17 books.

    In addition to her writing, Robertson was the instigator of a lawsuit that won additional rights for freelance writers and journalsts. The lawsuit, Robertson v. Thompson Corp. reached the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that such writers retained the copyrights to their work when newspapers put it into their online databases.

    She died in 2014 in King City, Ontario.

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