P. K. Page
Contributor Banff Centre Press
P. K. Page was born in England in 1916. In 1919 she came with her
parents to Red Deer, Alberta, where her father returned after serving
with the Canadian infantry in the First World War. Subsequently, she
lived in Calgary, Winnipeg, Saint John, Manitoba, Montreal, Ottawa, and
Victoria. As a young woman she worked in a variety of jobs: as a
salesgirl and radio actress in Saint John, a file clerk and researcher
in Montreal, and then as a script writer for the National Film Board in
Ottawa. In the 1940s she was a member of the Preview group as
well as a co-editor. She married Arthur Irwin in 1950 when he was
Chairman of the NFB. From 1953 to 1965 while Arthur was respectively
Canadian High Commissioner to Australia, Canadian Ambassador to Brazil,
and Canadian Ambassador to Mexico, Page began work as a visual artist,
studying first in Brazil andthen, briefly, in New York. She has
exhibited in one-woman and group shows in Mexico, Toronto, Vancouver,
Victoria, and Peterborough. Her written work includes poetry, fiction,
children’s books, essays, and a memoir. Currently she is at work on a
long unheroic autobiographical poem and a libretto for an opera.