Perhaps the most important intellect at Mitchell Press was Howard Mitchell's wife, Janet Ruth Mitchell (MacDonald), who used Ann Wilson as a pseudonym. She was born in Leadville, Colorado to Canadian parents on April 30, 1905. When she was in high school, as the eldest of four daughters, the MacDonald family moved to New Westminster. Enrolled in honours French, she participated in the so-called Great Trek to UBC and was among the last class to graduate from the Fairview campus of what became the University of British Columbia. After a year at the Sorbonne where she gained her teaching credentials for French, she taught at Magee High School, St. Clare School for Girls and Victoria College before becoming a co-founder of York House School for Girls in 1932. She married Howard Mitchell in 1933 and quit teaching in 1934. For 15 years she wrote for one of her husband's consumer publications, Western Homes and Living, under the pseudonyn Ann Wilson (her great-grandmother's name) and published two editions of the Ann Wilson Cookbook. It contained more than 700 recipes from the cookery pages of Western Homes and Living magazine, arranged in alphabetical order under fourteen classifications. Western Homes and Living was owned and operated by Mitchell Press. Increasingly involved with UBC as a trustee of the UBC Development Fund for eight years, she turned to fulltime involvement with Mitchell Press, as a proofreader and editor, when her children were fully grown. During the Sixties and Seventies, when Mitchell Press was most active as a book publisher, she worked behind the scenes as a shepherd for some of its better titles, editing manuscripts. Retired in 1979, she reached 100 years of age in the company of her sister Helen, then died on July 8, 2004.

BOOKS:

Wilson, Ann. The Ann Wilson Cookbook (Mitchell Press, 1958).

[BCBW 2005] "Cookbook"