Image by Duane Prentice
Sharon Butala is the second of five daughters born of a French Canadian father and an Irish-Scots Canadian mother in an outpost hospital in Nipawin, Saskatchewan. She began life on a sawmill at the edge of the boreal forest, then lived in a series of small towns before moving to Saskatoon in 1953. She has lived all but five years of her life in Saskatchewan. In 1976 she gave up her nearly-finished Masters degree, to marry Peter Butala and to depart for cattle country in the southwest where she has been ever since, learning to ride horses, to chase cows and becoming gratefully absorbed in the mid-grass prairie as teacher, as sustainer of life and of spirit.
In 1978 she turned to writing, discovering to her delight that it satisfied, even sometimes giving her joy, that she had a lifetime of things to say, and the most profound desire to say them, as well as the never-ending need to learn how to say them artfully. Since then she has written sixteen books, both fiction and nonfiction, many essays and articles and reviews, and has had five plays produced, winning a number of awards along the way and also, in 2002, being invested as an Officer in the Order of Canada.
She is the mother of one son, actor/writer/filmmaker Sean Hoy, whose marriage has produced two grandchildren, now eleven and six years.
In 1996 she and her husband turned over the 13,000 acre Butala family ranch to the Nature Conservancy of Canada so that it could become the Old Man On His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area, (OMB for short), and, sadly, in 2007 her husband Peter died, leaving her to start life all over again, perhaps in a new place. Stay tuned.
