Jean Coulthard was one of Canada’s best loved composers of the twentieth century. Today her music is more widely known than ever. Born in Vancouver to a musical family, Coulthard composed resolutely Canadian music that maintained the values of the great European classical tradition. Through text, music, and images, Jean Coulthard: A Life in Music explores her careers as composer, teacher, wife and mother, Coulthard studied with Vaughan Williams, Schoenberg, and Bartok, then mentored two generations of composers, all the while creating her own evocative music in every genre. For ninety-two years she watched her city grow from pioneer beginnings to become a major economic and cultural centre. Jean Coulthard’s eight decades of astonishing creativity are remarkable in themselves, but then, she was by any standard an extraordinary Canadian.