Born in Brandon, Manitoba, in 1919, Frank W. Anderson was orphaned
at 18 months and grew up in foster homes, reform schools and jails.
At age 16, he was convicted of killing a prison guard and was
sentenced to death. This was commuted to life and he spent the next
15 years in a penitentiary. There he completed his high school
education and became the first prisoner in Canada to take
university courses behind bars. Paroled in 1951, he completed a BA
and an MA in social work from the University of Toronto. He then
joined the John Howard Society and became a parole officer. He
developed a two-year course in human behaviour that was adopted by
several colleges, and he was appointed to the National Parole Board
in 1974, placed in charge of the region covering Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. He held this
position until he retired. In 1998, the University of Ottawa
created the Frank W. Anderson Archives of Criminology to serve as a
resource centre for students across Canada. He married Edna Marshal
in 1955 and they had two children. He moved to Saskatoon after
retiring and managed Frontier Books, publishing more than 100 books
on Canadian history written by himself and other authors, including
Ken Liddell and W.O. Mitchell. He also wrote a book about women who
were executed in Canada, A Dance with Death: Canadian Women on the
Gallows. Although he was later based in Calgary, Frank wrote,
edited and produced numerous titles pertaining to British
Columbia.
Art Downs, once described as "the first of the environmental
editors," became one of the forefathers of the B.C. publishing
industry.
Arthur George Downs was born in 1924 in England and emigrated with
his parents at age five. They settled in northeastern Saskatchewan,
where he grew up during the Depression. "I attended a typical
one-room rural school," he recalled, "with a frustrated teacher
attempting to teach grades 1-8 to some 50 impoverished farm boys
and girls." His father joined the Canadian Navy during the Second
World War and the family came to the west coast. In 1943, Downs
joined the merchant navy and worked for seven years, mainly as a
radio officer. Unable to pursue his hopes of becoming a reporter
due to his lack of experience, he returned to help operate his
father's ranch in the Quesnel River Valley in the Cariboo. "Our
ranch was the same as about 90 percent of Cariboo ranches," he
said. "The owner needed an outside job to support the operation. I
reluctantly abandoned ranching but left with a double legacy--the
knack of stilling a potent beverage christened 'Quesnel River
Screech' and an incurable malady known as Caribooitis. The most
noticeable symptom of the latter affliction is an unsettled feeling
when the victim is anywhere else except the Cariboo."
His first published story, "The Saga of the Upper Fraser
Sternwheelers," appeared in 1950 in the Cariboo Digest, a regional
magazine published in Quesnel since 1945. With Wes Logan, he bought
the Cariboo Digest from Alex Sahonovich in 1955 and became its
editor. It evolved into BC Outdoors, a successful blend of history,
wildlife and conservation that served a broad readership. He didn't
believe in fishing derbies or trophies, but he recognized the
importance of tourism. He deplored clear-cut logging and was a
tireless conservationist and grassroots organizer. Selling BC
Outdoors in 1979, he and his wife Doris turned to publishing books
by BC writers and for BC readers under the name Heritage House.
Downs eschewed the city and affected a down-to-earth bluntness that
disguised his sophistication. Along the way he served as president
of the BC Wildlife Federation, director of the Canadian Wildlife
Federation and a member of the Pacific Salmon Commission. He died
at his home in Surrey on August 13, 1996.
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