Gladys Maime Taylor

TAYLOR, Gladys M.

Gladys Maime Taylor was born on June 25 1917 in Swan River Manitoba and passed away on Sunday, May 31, 2015 at the Bethany Care Centre in Airdrie, AB at the age 97 years.

She leaves to mourn her children, Dennis (Jackie), Lorne (Cathy) and Susan (Fred) Denischuk; grandchildren,  Jessica, Brett, Mark, Nathan, Christy, Blake, Melanie; along with great grandchildren, Sydney, Brandon, Merritt, Alexander, Ella and Lilly. She was predeceased by her husband, Lorne and son, Barry.

A teacher by profession she joined the Canadian Women’s Army Corps in 1943 and served until the end of the war. Gladys was an award winning author who had won many awards in her distinguished career but was most proud of winning the Ryerson Press Award given to the best novels of the year. She won this award twice for her first two novels Pine Roots and The King Tree. Her other novels included Alone In The Outback, Valinda Our Daughter and Alone In The Boardroom. Her Outback book was made into a movie called Over The Hill starring Olympia Dukasis. Valinda was the story of a Beiseker girl and her son killed in a terriost attack in Malta. Gladys wrote a weekly column for the Toronto Telegram and also appeared on many television and radio programs throughout her career and hosted her own TV program in Sherbrooke Quebec. During 1989 Gladys ran for the Canadian Senate in the first senate election held in Alberta. She received the most votes of all the independent candidates. Gladys also started several recreational vehicle consumer and industry magazines during the 1970’s. These were subsequently moved to Irricana Alberta along with her printing company. This allowed her, along with her children, to also begin several weekly newspapers including The Five Village Weekly (now Rockyview Weekly) and The Carstairs Courier. During this time other newspapers were also established for areas including Carbon, Trochu and Airdrie. Also at this time the flagship farm newspaper The Wheel and Deal was first established for Alberta and later expanded to Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In 1983 Gladys was named Calgary’s “Businesswoman Of The Year “Recently the town of Irricana named its new library the Gladys Taylor Library in recognition of all the efforts she put forth for the town. In later years Gladys was able to spend many Canadian winters in her adopted Australia. Gladys lived a full life and in the end her bucket list was completed.

At Mom’s request there will be no Funeral Service  but a family service will be held in the summer in Swan River, Manitoba.