Annora Brown (1889–1987) was one of Alberta’s foremost early artists. She was formally trained at the Ontario College of Art in the 1920s, where the Group of Seven and Robert H. Holmes, one of Ontario’s foremost wildflower artists, instructed her. Her artistic practice spanned the 1930s to the mid-1980s. Despite the isolation of living in the frontier town of Fort Macleod for most of her life, Brown made a living as an artist through teaching (including at Mount Royal College, the University of Alberta, and the Banff School of Fine Arts), illustrating books and magazines, and selling her brightly coloured paintings in watercolour, tempera, and oil, and later, serigraph prints. Her work is represented in private collections and various public venues such as the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, and Calgary’s Glenbow Museum.
Mary-Beth Laviolette is an avid hiker and independent art writer and curator based in Canmore, Alberta, who specializes in Albertan and Western Canadian art. She is the author of A Delicate Art: Artists, Wildflowers and Native Plants of the West and An Alberta Art Chronicle: Adventures in Recent&Contemporary Art, 1970–2000, and co-author of Alberta Art&Artists: A Survey. Recent exhibitions she has curated include Reckonings: Michael Cameron&Karen Maiolo (Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff); Pulse: Alberta Society of Artists at 80 Years (Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts, Calgary) and Alberta Mistresses of the Modern: 1935 to 1975 (Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton). Mary-Beth is also a public speaker and enjoys engaging with the public about art whenever and wherever possible.
Niitsítapi (Siksika) Bishop Sidney Black was elected and consecrated in 2017 to be the Indigenous Bishop of Treaty 7 territory, within the Diocese of Calgary. He is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy from Siksika First Nation and has served in ministry with Indigenous peoples for many years, including leadership roles at the national level of the Anglican Church, where he helped to facilitate the ongoing movement towards an autonomous Indigenous Church within the Anglican Church of Canada.