Ruth M. Buck was born and brought up in the very community she describes with such precision and affection in The Doctor Rode Side Saddle - the Indian reserve of Onion Lake, Saskatchewan. It was there that her parents established their Anglican mission and hospital for the Saskatchewan Cree Indians at the turn of the century.
Of the children born to John and Elizabeth Matheson, Ruth was the seventh. She was only ten years old when her father died, yet twenty years later when she began to gather notes on the early years of his colourful life, she found the way that could instantly unlock delighted memory. It was the simple statement: "I'm a daughter of John Grace." (Ruth's father was born in 1845 in Kildonan on the Red River, where there were many other John Mathesons. There was only one "John Grace", and he carried the nickname with lively zest, far beyond Kildonan, into the Territory of Saskatchewan).
In writing her mother’s story, The Doctor Rode Side Saddle, (published by McClelland & Stewart, in 1974) Ruth recalls that no incident in the story needed invention and practically every one was drawn from her mothers personal recollections.
Ruth Buck graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1928 and taught school in Winnipeg until 1932. She is now a ninety-one year old widow living is Regina, Saskatchewan.
In addition to her first book, Voices of the Plains Cree,
published in 1973, Ruth Buck has contributed numerous articles to Saturday
Night, The Beaver, Saskatchewan History Magazine, Century, and the Regina
Leader-Post.