Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
St. Pierre, Paul H.
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1923-
History
Canadian writer Paul St. Pierre was born in Chicago on 14 October 1923, and grew up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. After a brief period with the Royal Canadian Air Force, he moved to Vancouver in 1945, where he began a career in journalism. Although his career has taken several other turns, St. Pierre has continued to work as a journalist, most notably for The Vancouver Sun, where he was a regular columnist for close to thirty years. He is also widely known for his books. His novels, many of which are set in British Columbias Chilcotin region, include Boss of the Namko (1965), Chilcotin Holiday (1979), Navel of the Moon (1993), and Breaking Smiths Quarter Horse (1966), basis for the Disney film Smith! (1969). His works of nonfiction include British Columbia: Our Land (1977) and Old Enough to Know Better (2002). St. Pierre has also written various scripts for television and the theatre. He was one of the principal scriptwriters for the award-winning CBC series, Cariboo Country, a Canadian western set in central British Columbia that aired for eight years during the 1960s. He also wrote, among other television dramas, the acclaimed Sister Balonika (1969), and his play How to Run the Country was produced by the Vancouver Playhouse in 1967.
St. Pierre was the first Canadian to receive the Western Writers of America Spur Award, for his novel Smith and Other Events in 1983. In 2000, he was honoured with the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to the literary arts in British Columbia. He also won the Joe Marten Memorial Award for the Preservation of Cowboy Heritage in British Columbia in 2007.
In a departure from his writing activities, St. Pierre served as a Liberal member of Parliament for the riding of Coast Chilcotin from 1968 to 1972 and as Police Commissioner of British Columbia from 1979 to 1983.
St. Pierre has four children and eight grandchildren. He continues to write and divides his time between his homes in Mexico, the Chilcotin, and B.C.s Fraser Valley