Jon Dellandrea is a sort of Renaissance character… author, scholar, art historian, art detective, academic, community volunteer and a creative, curious, inquisitive soul. Educated at the University of Toronto with undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees and bestowed with a “Master of Arts by resolution” from the University of Oxford, “Amicus Artes Liberales” from the University of Waterloo, and Honorary Doctorates from Nipissing University and the University of Toronto.

When he is not writing he has served as Chancellor of Nipissing University, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Vice-President & Chief Advancement Officer of the University of Toronto, Vice-President of Development of the University of Waterloo, President of the Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation, and President & CEO of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Foundation. He also served as Advancement Counsel to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

He has served as Chair of the Board of the Art Canada Institute and is a Trustee of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and a Director of the Friends of St George’s Hall Foundation. He has engaged in a variety of other community activities over the years, including the Boards of Right to Play and the Toronto Community Foundation.

His work has been published in the Globe and Mail, The Literary Review of Canada, “Up the Gatineau,” the annual book of the Gatineau Valley Historical Society, Canadian Collector Magazine, and Canada’s History Magazine.

His first published book, “The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case, The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson Forgeries,” Goose Lane 2022, won the J.J. Talman Award for the best book on Ontario cultural history from the Ontario Historical Society in 2024.

He is married to a talented painter, Lyne Dellandrea, who keeps him humble and sane, and they have two equally gifted sons, Matthew and Brendan.

In 2006, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.