Charlotte Gray, award-winning biographer and historian, was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, at the 9:30 a.m. ceremony on Friday, June 10, “in recognition of outstanding contributions to Canadian history and biography and to the cultural life of the nation’s capital.”
Charlotte Gray began her writing career in England as a magazine editor and newspaper columnist. After coming to Canada in 1979, she worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine columnist before she turned to biography and popular history.
Her most recent book is Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike. In 2008, she published Nellie McClung, a short biography of Canada’s leading women’s rights activist in the Penguin Series, Extraordinary Canadians.
Her 2006 bestseller, Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell, won the Donald Creighton Award for Ontario History and the City of Ottawa Book Award. Her previous five books were all award winning bestsellers. She appears regularly on radio and television as a political and cultural commentator.
Gray is an adjunct research professor in the Department of History at Carleton University. She has won or been nominated for most of the major non-fiction awards in Canada. She is currently the chair of Canada’s National History Society. In 2008, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada.