Mary Ashworth of Saltspring Island began her long interest in the education of immigrant children when she began a Brownie pack in Chinatown in 1950. She joined the Faculty of Education at UBC in 1967. In 1973 she drove across Canada to study the education of non-English speaking children which led her to publish Immigrant Children and Canadian Schools (1975). While there have since been major improvements, there is still much work to do, she says in Blessed with Bilingual Brains. Ashworth's other books are The Forces Which Shaped Them: A History of the Education of Minority Group Children in British Columbia (New Star, 1979), Beyond Methodology (1985) and Children of the Canadian Mosaic (1993).

[BCBW 1995] "Education"

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
The Forces Which Shaped Them
The Forces Which Shaped Them: A History of the Education of Minority Group Children in British Columbia