P.K. Page did not rest on her literary laurels in a career spanning more than 60 years.

As recently as April, Page read at Winchester Galleries from her new book You Are Here as part of B.C. Book and Magazine Week celebrations. She published five books last year.

Winner of many honours, Page wrote poetry, non-fiction, novels, librettos and children’s literature. She was also an accomplished artist, whose work is in the permanent collection of Ottawa’s National Gallery.

Trent University in Peterborough has planned an extensive homage to Page, including a gallery, massive web archive, and multi-volume anthology. Prof. Zailig Pollock, director of English graduate programs there, is spearheading the 10-year project.

“P.K. Page was a very important artist and extremely varied writer,” he said.

“Anyone who knows Canadian literature knows her work.”

In 2004, Lt.-Gov. Iona Campagnolo said, “P.K. Page is a true Renaissance woman,” on awarding her the inaugural Lieutenant Governor’s Literary Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.

Her 1970s-era poetic narrative Unless the Eye Catch Fire touched on global warming long before the concern became fashionable. When it was adapted for the stage in 1996, she told the Times Colonist she hoped not to be around for the bleak finale if global warming signals the end.

In 2001, her poem Planet Earth was read simultaneously in New York, Antarctic and South Pacific to celebrate International Year of Dialogue Between Civilizations.

Poet Lorna Crozier has described Page as one of the grand dames of Canadian letters.

“A lot of writers repeat themselves, but P.K. challenges herself every day in writing and is always moving forwards,” Crozier told the Times Colonist in 2004.

Poet, memoirist and novelist Patrick Lane lauded Page in the same article, saying “she pays attention to every word and that’s something only the finest poet will do.”

“Novelists take thousands of pages to say what she manages in 20 lines.”

Victoria Poet Laureate Linda Rogers called Page a “celestial jeweller who polished everything beautifully and left the world a brighter place.”

Born Nov. 23, 1916, in Swanage, Dorset, Page was raised on the Prairies where she began writing poetry, hiding behind her first two initials rather than use her full name, Patricia Kathleen Page.

“It was the Dark Ages then, and anyone who wrote poetry was an absolute wimp.

“I was afraid my friends would tease me and I’d never have a boyfriend ... so I hid,” she laughingly told the Times Colonist.

While working as a scriptwriter at the National Film Board, Page met her husband, board commissioner Arthur Irwin, a former editor of Maclean’s magazine. They were married in 1950. Irwin, 19 years her senior, had three children from an earlier marriage.

Stepson Neal Irwin was blown away at their first meeting.

“I was 18 and had been working up in Quebec as a forest ranger. I staggered into dad’s apartment pretty damn tired and here was this gorgeous, glamorous creature. She was just wonderful from Day 1. A terrific mother, grandmother, great-grandmother.” His own mother had died of asthma.

Athletic and enthusiastic, she impressed him with her flips and cartwheels, as well as with her agile mind, “She was a polymath. Quirky, endlessly curious, a wonderful raconteuse,” and almost two decades younger than his dad.

“She was a bonanza.”

In 1954, Irwin was appointed Canadian high commissioner to Australia, then ambassador to Brazil and later Mexico and Guatemala. It was the same year Page won the Governor General’s Award for poetry for The Metal and the Flower (1954).

Page’s poetry flourished in Australia, but not in Brazil and Mexico where she was unable to readily tap into her native tongue’s speech rhythms. She began an illustrated diary.

Paintings from that period and beyond are signed with her married name.

In 2002, she explained the genesis of her visual art to Times Colonist art critic Robert Amos.

“As a child I drew everything I saw. If my eyes fell on it, I drew it. In black and white, with a pen.

“Later, I went to art school. The teacher asked me, ‘What are your implements? A pen? Throw away your pen!’ It was very hard for me to do, but it was the best advice I ever had. It freed me. I threw away my crutch and it forced me to walk.

“I started to paint in oils. That’s what people do, I thought. But I didn’t like oils. They dried so slowly, yet I like to touch what I’m doing while I work on it. Then I discovered oil pastels. They’re dry when you put them on, and you could scratch through them with a sharp instrument. They have great colour and you can brush them to a softness.”

After her husband retired from External Affairs, the family moved to Victoria where Irwin was the publisher of the Victoria Times from 1964 to 1971. He died in 1999 at 101.

Page resumed writing poetry here in the late 1960s.

She had strong opinions on language, worrying about its future: “It’s becoming computer language and I think we are either going to be capable of telepathy in the future, and not need language at all, or our language will turn into a series of snorts and grunts.”

Longtime friend Thea Gray met her 20 years ago. A huge fan of poetry in general and Page’s in particular, Gray begged her sister for an introduction. They met and “we talked about poetry ever since.”

When Page’s husband became ill and couldn’t fly, the two travelled together. “P.K. was picking up honorary degrees almost daily and I went along,” Gray said.

“She had eight honorary degrees and was offered a ninth.

“She is one of the two or three world-class poets this country has produced. A woman with an astonishing mind that thought of all kinds of strange things. She loved talking about the mind, the nature of poetry, everything from crop circles and hypnosis to aliens and human identity.”

Did Page fear death? Never. “She once told me: ‘I’m not afraid of death. I’m also not afraid of lions, although if one came into the room I might change my mind.’ ”

“She had tremendous physical courage ... That was the sort of person she was: Beautiful, loaded with charm, brave, and always searching.”