The SWG is saddened to hear of the passing of long-time SWG member Dorothy June Mitchell. An accomplished writer of poetry and prose, June looked forward to every writers group meeting at Nicky’s. When she wasn’t dedicating her life to teaching children with disabilities, she was a social warrior and advocate. A founding member of the Intercultural Grandmothers Uniting, June was actively involved with the Seniors University Group at the University of Regina Lifelong Learning Centre. Read Full Obituary Here
A Tribute to June, by Dave Margoshes
I moved to Saskatchewan – to Regina – in the fall of 1986. I joined the Guild, was elected to its board and threw myself into the city’s and province’s writing community. It wasn’t long before I began to cross paths with June Mitchell, who I think of now as the Grand Old Dame of Regina’s literary scene. As many of you know, June died in early December, at 98. But back then, when we first became friends, she was very much alive, getting arrested during the Mohawk occupation at Oka, Quebec, in 1990, joining a caravan of cars bringing supplies to the beleaguered people of El Salvador in 1992, and a fixture at various peace marches at home.
I had just published my first book, and I gave a reading and talk at the Seniors Centre on College Avenue in Regina. June was there and she asked question after question – she had an insatiable thirst for and about writing. In those days, the University of Regina had an extension department, and I inherited its creative writing classes. June was in my first class, along with her daughter-in-law, Bernadette Wagner. And, if my memory serves me right, so was Tracy Hamon.
Over the following years, June took many classes and workshops with me and was in the workshop Judy Krause and I led at Sage Hill. Over the years, I read hundreds of poems and stories by June, and helped her put together a collection of poems and a memoir.
She took great pleasure in getting published – as all writers do, and she placed work locally in Spring, Grain, and the senior's publication, Grey Matters, as well as some other literary magazines – but her greatest pleasure was in the writing itself, I think, and in helping others. She was active in the literary community, occasionally leading the group at the Seniors Centre, and was a member of the Erratics, with Brenda Niskala, Karlene Gibson, Bernadette Wagner and others. Right up almost to the end of her life she was a regular with a group that met weekly at Nicky’s Café.
And I had the great pleasure, and honour, of being the sole male member of a writing group made up of June and other alumni from my various classes. We met once a month for years – I wasn’t the teacher at these gatherings, just another member – always with pie and lots of laughter.
I have many memories of June Mitchell, but my favorite is a more personal one.
In the early ’90s, my former father-in-law, Ira Silber, moved to Regina to be closer to my wife and me. He had visited us a few years earlier when we lived in Calgary, and we’d taken him to Banff. Now, in Regina, he had a yen to visit Banff again. He was old and in poor health, and he had a romantic notion that he would go for a hike in the mountains…and just disappear.
He put a few things into a bindle and set off on foot, intending to hitchhike all the way to Banff. He took a bus to the outskirts of town and stuck out his thumb. The first person to stop and pick him up – as fate would have it – was June Mitchell, on her way to Banff herself in her van, along with her dog. They began to talk and when they got to Briercrest, they stopped at the Pilgrim Inn for coffee and some of its famous pie, and more talk. By the time they got to Banff, they were fast friends.
My father-in-law did not disappear into the mountains. He returned to Regina after a weekend with June and they remained close friends for the few more years of his life. Somehow, she’d changed his mind.
That was the kind of woman June was.
- Dave Margoshes