Peter Stursberg

Arthur Lewis Peter Stursberg, known as Peter Stursberg, (August 31, 1913 – August 31, 2014) was a Canadian writer and broadcaster.

Life and career Stursberg was born in Yantai, China, the son of Mary Ellen (née Shaw) and Walter Arthur Stursberg, who was working for the Chinese postal service. His father was born in Canada to a German father from the Rhineland and an English mother, while his mother was born in China to an English father and a Japanese mother.

At the age of seven, Stursberg's parents took him on a world tour before returning to China. At age 11, Stursberg was sent to a boarding school in England. Several years later his parents returned to Canada. He joined them and went on to graduate from West Hill High School in Montreal. He then took his British matriculation at Bedford School before returning to Montreal in 1930 to attend McGill University where he studied sciences and wrote for the McGill Daily.

Stursberg's final book, No Foreign Bones in China (2002), details his family's complex relationship with his country of birth: "Stursberg recreated the story of his family in China for No Foreign Bones in China, recalling the turbulent birth of modern China through the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, two world wars and the rise of Mao. It traces the fortunes of Captain Samuel Lewis Shaw, a merchant seaman, who arrived in China in the 1830s. He settled in Fuzhou and married a Japanese woman, Peter Stursberg's grandmother, to whom the book is dedicated. The Shaw children grew up in Pagoda Anchorage, the heart of the Chinese tea trade. The title refers to the fury of the Chinese over the Korean War. They expelled all foreigners and even dug up their bones, including the bones of Stursberg's grandfather and grandmother."

Through his ancestors Captain Shaw and his Japanese wife, Stursberg is related to former British Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith.

Stursberg is the father of former CBC executive Richard Stursberg. His granddaughter, Trina Maus, is a news reporter for CTV. Stursberg died in 2014, on his 101st birthday, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Selected bibliography Journey Into Victory: Up the Alaska Highway and to Sicily and Italy (1944) Agreement in Principle (1961) Those Were The Days: Victoria in the 1930s (1969) Mister Broadcasting: The Ernie Bushnell Story (1971) Diefenbaker: Leadership Gained 1956-62, Toronto 1975, University of Toronto Press Diefenbaker: Leadership Lost 1962-67, Toronto 1976, University of Toronto Press

Lester Pearson and the American Dilemma (1980) EXTRA! When the Papers Had the Only News (1982) Gordon Shrum: An Autobiography with Peter Stursberg (1986) The Golden Hope: Christians In China (1987) Roland Michener, The Last Viceroy (1989) The Sound of War: Memoirs of a CBC Correspondent (1993) No Foreign Bones in China: Memoirs of Imperialism and Its Ending (2002)