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Thomas Graeme Cameron Gibson (9 August 1934 – 18 September 2019) was a Canadian novelist. Graeme Gibson's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia. He was a Member of the Order of Canada (1992), a Senior Fellow of Massey College and one of the organizers of the Writers Union of Canada (chair, 1974–75). He was also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community.
Gibson was awarded the Toronto Arts Award (1990) the Harbourfront Festival prize in 1993, and he was made a member of the Order of Canada.
An arts, environmental and social justice advocate, Gibson was one of the founders of the Writers' Union of Canada, which recognized his contribution by establishing an award in his honour in 1991. He was involved in the formation of the Writer's Trust of Canada and was a co-founder and president (1987–89) of PEN Canada. He also had a small acting role in the 1983 film The Wars.
His environmental advocacy was largely focused around his longtime love of birds. He was a founder and chair of the Pelee Island Bird Observatory, served on the Council of the World Wildlife Fund, and with Margaret Atwood, as co-chair of Birdlife International's Rare Bird Club. He was a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, which awarded him a Gold Medal in 2015.
In 2017 Gibson was diagnosed with early signs of vascular dementia. Despite having written a book on birds, he could no longer identify those he liked to watch in his garden, but said "I no longer know their names, but then, they don't know my name either". He died on 18 September 2019 in London, England, where Atwood was promoting her new book, five days after suffering a severe stroke. Atwood later said about his death that it had not been unexpected due to the vascular dementia, had been a good one—and in a good hospital, and his children had time to come and say goodbye—and that he had been "declining and he had wanted to check out before he reached any further stages of that".
Following his death, the Writers' Trust of Canada renamed its annual fiction award, formerly the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, to the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in early 2021. "Writers' Trust renames fiction prize after co-founders and couple Atwood and Gibson". CTV News, January 27, 2021.
Bibliography
Categories: 1934 Births, 2019 Deaths, 20th-century Canadian Male Writers, 20th-century Canadian Novelists, 21st-century Canadian Male Writers, 21st-century Canadian Novelists, Canadian Male Non-fiction Writers, Canadian Male Novelists, Canadian Nature Writers, Harbourfront Festival Prize Winners, Members Of The Order Of Canada, Fellows Of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Deaths From Dementia In England, Deaths From Vascular Dementia, People From New Tecumseth, Writers From London, Ontario, Writers From Simcoe County, Novelists From Ontario
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