Child-care pioneer Elsie Stapleford of Victoria, B.C., and award-winning writer Sharon Butala of Eastend, Sask., will receive their degrees at separate ceremonies at the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts. Butala will be honoured at the 10 a.m. convocation ceremony and Stapleford at the 2 p.m. ceremony.

The U of R has presented 85 honorary degrees in its 25-year history as an independent degree-granting university.

Stapleford’s career in child care began in the 1930s and her contributions and influence have fundamentally affected the ways in which Canadian society thinks about and cares for children. She has been a powerful force for child care and the training of early childhood educators.

Born in Vancouver, B.C., Stapleford moved to Regina at the age of five. Her father, Rev. Ernest W. Stapleford, was president of Regina College, the U of R’s predecessor, from 1915 to 1934 and principal from 1934 to 1937. To honour her father and her mother, Maude, Stapleford established an endowment for the Stapleford Lecture Series at the U of R.

A psychology graduate of the University of Toronto Institute of Child Study, she worked with the Ontario government to establish day cares in that province. She retired to Victoria in 1976.

Butala is the author of nine books, five plays and numerous short stories, poems and articles. She has twice been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Awards, once for non-fiction and once for fiction. Born in Nipawin, Sask., she was educated in small towns in Saskatchewan and at the University of Saskatchewan.

Butala’s writing is frequently set on the vast Saskatchewan prairie. She gives voice to often unheard voices of rural women.