Background
McDonald was born in 1951, in Biggar, Saskatchewan, the daughter of Lester and Erna Kelly. She grew up on a prairie farm.
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Bernadette McDonald
Edit ProfileEducation
She studied at Pacific Lutheran University, the University of Western Ontario and The Banff Centre.
Career
Her childhood and most of her education was focused on music, with a special emphasis on the performance of contemporary classical chamber music She moved to the Canadian Rockies in the early 1970s. She volunteered for the Banff Mountain Film Festival and she worked at The Banff Centre for twenty years, directing the Banff Mountain Festivals and starting the Mountain Culture division.
She resigned from her position of vice president, Mountain Culture in 2006 to concentrate on writing.
She lectures on a variety of mountain topics for universities, festivals and alpine clubs, consults on mountain cultural issues with start-up festivals and mountain institutes, and curates mountain-related exhibitions. She was Canada’s representative at the United Nations to launch the International Year of Mountains.
She has traveled widely, from South Africa to Iceland, Tibet to Patagonia, New Zealand to India, France to Turkey and Italy.
