Presenting five titles in the Quest Biography series that profiles prominent figures in Canada’s history. The important Canadian lives detailed here are: longtime Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King; Quebec premier and separatist René Lévesque; the explorer of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain; National Film Board founder John Grierson; and medical humanitarian Lucille Teasdale.

Includes

• William Lyon Mackenzie King
• Réne Lévesque
• Samuel de Champlain
• John Grierson
• Lucille Teasdale

lian goodall has had an interest in sharing stories since she first made up poems for her little sisters. She began reviewing Canadian children’s books in the 1980s and currently has a regular column in the Guelph Mercury and St. Catharines Standard. Her first published book was with Warwick Press in 1999, Diego Maradona: The Man With the Magic Feet, the story of the great Argentinian soccer player. Her second, William Lyon Mackenzie King: Dreams and Shadows came out with XYZ publishing in 2003. She is presently the Program Officer at the Mackenzie King Estate in the Gatineau Park, Quebec, which is not too far from her home in Ottawa, Ontario, where she lives with one of her two daughters.

lian goodall's profile page

Marguerite Paulin teaches at McGill University and also produces and hosts a radio program. She is also the author of René Lévesque (XYZ Publishing, 2004).

Marguerite Paulin's profile page

JONATHAN KAPLANSKY won a French Voices Award to translate Nobel Prize winning author Annie Ernaux’s La vie extérieure (Things Seen). His translation of Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic by Hervé Dumont was a finalist for the Wall Award from the Theatre Library Association. Recent translations include Jonathan Bécotte’s Like a Hurricane, Hélène Rioux’s The End of the World is Elsewhere, and the libretto of an opera by Hélène Dorion and Marie-Claire Blais entitled Yourcenar: An Island of Passions. He has also translated Dorion’s Days of Sand. Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Kaplansky now lives in Montreal.

Jonathan Kaplansky's profile page

A researcher and freelance writer, Francine Legaré lives in Quebec.

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Gary Evans, author of The National Interest: A Chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada from 1949 to 1989 (1991), has published extensively on the history of media and communications. A former student of John Grierson, Evans completed his degree in history at McGill and currently teaches at the University of Ottawa. Since 1975 he has also worked as a consultant and writer for the NFB.

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Georges Vanier, who served as Governor General of Canada from 1959 to 1967, was 26 when he was one of the first men to join the newly established Royal 22nd Regiment - known as the "Van Doos." He was in his second year in the Montreal firm of Dessaules and Garneau, and very much the son of a Montreal upper-class family. His service in the First World War shaped his character, and he often described the four years spent on the battlefields of Europe as the most rewarding of his life. Vanier, described byMaclean's as "Canada's moral compass," remains one of the most respected and deeply loved figures in Canadian public life.

Deborah Cowley's profile page