PATRICIA M. BOYER, who died in 1978 at age 66 while working on her novel The Matriarch, was a public librarian, a secondary school teacher, then a newspaper writer and editor. She became a community leader in arts and theatre, church work, drama, the education of children with disabilities, and music. Both in her local Muskoka community in Ontario and in the wider world, she was actively devoted to human rights and the work of Amnesty International. Patricia Boyer authored the book Looking at Our Century.