Rosaleen Dickson, an editor of THE EQUITY for more than 30 years, has died in Ottawa at the age of 96.
She and her husband, David, purchased THE EQUITY in 1953 and founded Pontiac Printshop Ltd., a printing and publishing business in Shawville, where they raised their six children.
As the editor of THE EQUITY , Mrs. Dickson was an outspoken presence in Pontiac County, both through the pages of the newspaper and her own engagement in community life. She managed a Shawville hockey team, started a Brownies pack, and taught children how to square dance on horseback. As the first woman to sit on Shawville town council, she put her energies into such projects as revamping the town water system, the construction of seniors’ residences and turning the land around Shawville’s Mill Dam into a park.

THE EQUITY gained national attention with its publication of a ballot surveying readers on what they would want to do if Quebec decided to separate, which produced results overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the Pontiac within Canada.
Rosaleen was an active broadcaster throughout the Ottawa Valley, including as co-host with Bill Luxton of Valley Weekly at CJOH-TV in Ottawa, as the producer and host of a weekly interview program at CHOV-TV in Pembroke, a co-founder and program host of the Pontiac Community Radio station, CHIP, in Fort Coulonge, a regular contributor of Pontiac news to CBC Ottawa’s Radio Noon, a co-founder of CFVO, a French language cooperative television station in Hull, and a regular presenter of Pontiac news on its program Le Quotidien.
Rosaleen and David passed the family business on to their children in the early 1980s, and spent much of the next 10 years living with their daughter, Elizabeth, in Ottawa and wintering in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they were avid sailors of their 25’ catamaran on the Gulf of Mexico.
Following David’s death in 1992, Rosaleen returned to the world of communication, helping her son Ross launch The Hill Times newspaper in Ottawa, teaching writing at Ryserson University in Toronto, and volunteering with the National Press Club, while earning a master’s degree in journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa at the age of 81.
Among the many honours she received for community service, she was awarded an Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.
Rosaleen died peacefully at her home with daughter Elizabeth in Ottawa on Tuesday.