It is with great sadness that we report the passing of CFG founding member & long-time PWAC member Gwen Martin. From her obituary:

"She was born in Bristol, England on 31 Oct 1951 and grew up in a pocket of wilderness on the Scarborough Bluffs overlooking Lake Ontario. She retained a strong affinity for mudflats, the smell of brine and an ocean surf breaking on rock cliffs. She made an ancestral pilgrimage through Britain, lived in Newfoundland and the Rockies, travelled to Europe and conducted field work north of Superior where as a stowaway, she rode home in a box car.

Eventually, she settled outside Fredericton, NB on the shore of Yoho Lake. It was during her earliest years there that a mongrel pup arrived on her doorstep, melted her heart and became the dog of her life. In winter, she had a penchant for posting spiders behind the hot water tank to keep them warm. Once, she acquiesced to a deer mouse who nested and raised a family in her woollen sock. Her vibrant curiosity led her to probe and share the profound mysteries of the living, both human and otherwise. Her creativity inspired her to help shape them. It has been quipped that had the times and circumstances aligned, she would have married Boris Pasternak, the Russian Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature."

In addition to being a founding member of the CFG & member of PWAC before it, Gwen was also a member of Crime Writers of Canada & the Writer's Federation of Nova Scotia, and served as the executive director of the Writer's Federation of New Brunswick.

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