Aboriginal Profile

Please Note: This biography is taken directly from the Lakehead University Program for the May, 1997 Convocation at which Olive Dickason was made a honorary Doctor of Letters.

 

 

Dr. Olive Dickason (LU honorary Doctor of Letters) is an accomplished journalist, teacher and author.  Born in 1920 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she received her BA in Philosophy and French from Notre Dame College in 1943.  For the next 23 years Olive enjoyed a successful career in journalism with several Canadian daily papers.  Beginning with the Regina Leader - Post, she later worked as a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press, as Women's Editor for the Montreal Gazette and the Toronto Globe and Mail.  Olive was recognized for her reporting skill with many awards including the McLaren Awards for typography and layout in both 1965 and 1967.  She left the Globe and Mail in 1967 to become Chief of Information Service of the National Gallery.  

 

At the age of 50 and with her children nearly grown, Olive returned to the academic field.  She received her MA in Canadian History from the University of Ottawa in 1972 and PhD in 1977.  During her studies Dr. Dickason wrote Indian Arts in Canada which won three awards for conception and design.  Her passion for early Canadian history and her pride and interest in her Metis heritage are reflected in subsequent work.  Olive is also the author of The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonization in the Americas, numerous scholary articles and co - author of The Law of Nations and the New World.  As an author, Olive has been instrumental in researching and documenting the importance of aboriginal participation at every stage of Canadian history.  In her book, Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples From Earliest Times, published in 1992, she has tried, she says, to "reverse the perspective of the standard history."

 

Her career as a teacher began as a graduate student at the University of Ottawa.  Olive taught the History of New France, directed a seminar in Canadian History and later lectured on the same subject, with an emphasis on Aboriginal history, at the University of Alberta as Professor of History from 1985 - 1992.  She is the recipient of many research grants including the Senior Rockefeller Fellowship in 1989.  Dr. Dickason was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta.  Recent honours bestowed upon her include several honorary degrees and the presentation of the Aboriginal Lifetime Achievement Award by the Canadian Native Arts Foundation.  She is also a Fellow at Ryerson Polytechnic University and was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1996.

 

Olive resides in Edmonton and continues to pursue her love of Aboriginal history with visits to early Indian archaeological sites.