Biography

LANCE GERARD WOOLAVER LANCE GERARD WOOLAVER was born in Digby,..

LANCE GERARD WOOLAVER

LANCE GERARD WOOLAVER was born in Digby, Digby County, Nova Scotia in 1948.  He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia with his wife, Martha Spencer, of Saskatoon.  They have been married for 50 years.  Their daughter Shirley is a nurse in Alberta and a trail rider.  Their son Lance the Younger travels throughout the world as a wildlife biologist, working with endangered species of condors and hawks in California, Mauritius, Madagascar and the West Indies.  Lance and Martha have two grandchildren, Glen and Jeremy.

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Lance the Elder has written a dozen books, plays and films, including, with the photographer Bob Brooks, the documentary film and book The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis.  Martha founded Spencer Books in 2016 to publish Maud Lewis: The Heart on the Door, the first complete biography of Maud and Everett Lewis.  The first edition of 800 sold out in three weeks.  Heart is now available in Halifax book and gift shops and via Amazon, Kindle and Etsy.  His play The Poor Farm was the first play in Canada to employ on the same stage actors of Mi’kMaq, White, Black and Acadian heritage.  His song cycle The Noel Cantata was recently produced in Porsgrunn (2012) and Notteroy (2013), Norway, appearing on a program with a work based on a New Year’s Message by Harald V, King of Norway, and with good reviews in the Norwegian press: Noel was written about the last remnant population of the Ipswich Sparrow.  His original play about Maud and Everett Lewis and Maud’s child Catherine Dowley, World Without Shadows, has enjoyed both professional and community productions, including an award-winning Neptune Theatre production and a Blyth Festival production.  His novel and film script The Outlaw League were recently produced in Montreal as the feature film La Gang des Hors la Loi.  It has appeared at film festivals around the world.  La Gang, directed by Jean Beaudry, and with a script by Jean Beaudry, Andre Melancon and Lance Woolaver, won the 2015 Vancouver Reel 2 Real Film Festival.  Lance has written extensively with the Nova Scotia author and musician Ron Foley MacDonald, including a CBC radio series on the Poor Farms of Nova Scotia, rural prisons for the poor closed in the 1960’s, and the subject of his 1996 play The Poor Farm.     For more information, go to View 902.