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A devoted and powerful champion of Canadian arts and culture, David Silcox has a life story that dazzles with tales beyond the easel and canvas.

The Massey Murder

Son of a Prairie Dust Bowl preacher, David Silcox rose through the ranks of the Canadian cultural establishment to promote Canadian artists internationally.

From his early days as the first Arts Officer of the Canada Council in the mid-1960s, to his position as Deputy Minister of Culture for the province of Ontario in the late 1980s, to his command of Sotheby’s Canada in the last decade of the century, David Silcox supported the successes of visual artists such as Tom Thomson, Christopher Pratt, Harold Town, and David Milne. With the eye of a practised treasure seeker, he was responsible for the return of a number of Canadian art gems by artists such as Paul Kane and Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven back to native soil.

This first-ever biography of David Silcox showcases a champion of Canadian art through his life and efforts to elevate artists from home around the world.

Author Biography

Nancy Silcox, a former academic and university disability counsellor, turned to biography writing in her retirement years. Fascinated by the stories of “ordinary folk” who grew into Canadian trail-blazers, she has written eighteen biographies from her rural home west of Kitchener-Waterloo.