Dorothy Harley Eber

Dorothy Margaret Eber, ( Harley; March 18, 1925 – August 16, 2022) was a British-born Canadian author and one of the first people to transcribe and publish oral histories of Inuit in Nunavut in both English and Inuktitut.

During the 1970s, she was one of the first writers to record their oral history on tape. She then completed the first oral biography of an Inuk, Pitseolak Ashoona, based on first hand accounts. She returned in 1970 to do interviews with the graphic artist Pitseolak Ashoona. The book, with Ashoona's drawings and prints, was published the next year and has never been out of print. She undertook many more interview projects in the North.

Tapes for her interviews are deposited in the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa. Over two summers, she also interviewed many elderly residents of Baddeck, Nova Scotia, who worked with Alexander Graham Bell on the hydrofoil and the tetrahedral kites which he developed there after the telephone made him famous. Her book Genius at Work: Images of Alexander Graham Bell was published in 1982 by Viking Press, New York and later by Nimbus, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Death Eber died from pneumonia in Oakville, Ontario, on August 16, 2022, at the age of 97.

Selected bibliography