“I am fortunate to be working with such a talented and diverse board and dedicated group of volunteers,” said Susan McIver. Joining the board in 2021, she served as Vice President before being elected President.
Susan brings experience and perspective from the scientific world as well as from volunteer activities and professional pursuits to the Arts Council. With university degrees in Science, Susan was a professor at the University of Toronto and professor and department chair at the University of Guelph. “Although I became a scientist rather than an artist as was my early ambition, I have been a lifelong supporter of the arts in various ways. The ‘creative spark’ necessary for original work in art or science comes from the same place,” she said.
Locally, she has served on the board of Pathways Addiction Resource Centre, Agur Lake Camp, and the Summerland Fall Fair. Previously she was chair of a rape crisis center and shelter for abused women in Ontario. In the Okanagan, she has been a coroner and a free-lance writer who has written extensively for magazines and newspapers and authored three books—two on patient safely and the most recent about an unsolved murder in her family.