Dora de Pedery-Hunt

Dora de Pédery-Hunt, CM OOnt (16 November 1913 – 29 September 2008) was a Hungarian-Canadian sculptor who designed medals and coins. She was the first Canadian citizen to design an effigy for Queen Elizabeth II.

Dora de Pédery was born in Budapest, Hungary 16 November 1913. She trained at the Royal School of Fine and Applied Arts in Budapest, receiving a Masters Diploma in Sculpture in 1943. After German forces occupied Hungary in March 1944, her family decided to flee west, fearing the Soviet advance from the east. They arrived in Hannover not long before its fall to the Allied forces.

Five years later, through the sponsorship of Major Thomas S. Chutter, she immigrated to Canada.

She died from colorectal cancer in Toronto, Ontario on 29 September 2008.

Maybe, after all, these limitations are necessary. I welcome these odds - my medals are the result of a good fight against them - and at the end at least I can look back on a bravely fought battle.

In 1963, she was elected to the Ontario Society of Artists. She was a founding member of the Canadian Portrait Academy and the Medallic Art Society of Canada. On numerous occasions, she represented Canada as a Delegate to the International Art Medal Federation FIDEM. She was elected to the Sculptors Society of Canada. She was a member of Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. She taught sculpture at the Ontario College of Art

She created the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II that was used on Canadian coinage in 1990.

Her medal design of Sir Donald Alexander Smith was used by Canada Post as a six cent postage stamp. Two of her portraits of Dr. Frances Loring are in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

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