Margaret Belcher

BELCHER, Margaret  (1920-2003)
Educator, Writer, Naturalist, Ornithologist

Margaret Belcher was born on December 19, 1920 in Dilke, Saskatchewan.  She attended classes at Luther College in Regina and studied at the University of Saskatchewan and at the University of Toronto where she obtained a Masters degree in Arts.  Margaret taught high school in Rosetown, Saskatchewan and became a professor of French at Regina College in 1944; becoming Dean of Women and later acting head of the French Department.  Later she undertook postgraduate studies in France.

Margaret was very involved in the Saskatchewan Natural History Society, as a Member, President, and recording secretary of the Saskatchewan Natural History Society, and in 1996 Belcher wrote its history, The Isabel Priestly Legacy: The Saskatchewan Natural History Society, 1949-1990, and for twenty-one years she was associate editor of the Society’s quarterly, the Blue Jay, and also authored Birds of Regina (1961, 1980) and in 1987 Bird Imagery in the Lyric Poetry of Tristan L’Hermite was published.

Margaret was honoured by the Regina Soroptomist Club in 1988, and named a Fellow of the Saskatchewan Natural History Society in 1989.  In 1997 she was invested with the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and in 2003 received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal.  She died on June 29, 2003.

The Margaret Belcher Reading Room is located in Luther College at the University of Regina.

Source:  http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/belcher_margaret_1920-2003.html accessed January 29, 2015

Written with information
from Margaret Belcher Obituary,
Elizabeth Seitz, 2015

Archival Collections (Finding Aids in PDF format)

88-36 - Faculty of Arts and Science, 1949-1988

89-81 - Photograph: Lucy Murray, 1956

94-39 - Personal and Professional Papers, 1962-1979

96-46 - Personal and Professional Papers, 1975-1995

2005-6 - Personal and Professional Papers, 1531-1990