About Elizabeth Lycar
Elizabeth Lycar was born in Toronto and trained as a commercial artist in Brandon, Manitoba. She spent fourteen years with Wardair, the much-loved Canadian charter airline, beginning as a passenger agent and moving on to train staff and supervise operations in Winnipeg.
That experience became People First: The Wardair Way, a book that is equally a history and a manual. Holiday Which? magazine named Wardair charter airline of the year in 1985, then scheduled carrier of the year in 1986 and again in 1987 — three consecutive years at the top of its industry. Her book is the account of how that happened, told from inside by someone who trained some of the people who made it so.
Her other work runs to lives and families. Quite an Undertaking: The Story of Violet Guymer is a biography; We Were All a Bit Delusional and Nobody Asked... but I remember draw on her own family and her own memory of things that are too painful to talk about. She has decided now, to talk about them, to be an encouragement to others in her demographic who may have their own painful stories to tell.
For younger readers, Rufus, The Firehouse Dog: The Big Forest Fire was taken up for fire education in British Columbia schools.
Quite an Undertaking has had a life well beyond the page. It was adapted for theatre and performed at FemFest in Winnipeg, and in March 2018 Senator Mary Jane McCallum read a chapter that illustrates an injustice in the north, in her maiden speech to the Canadian Senate.
She lives in Kelowna, BC.