Dancer, community activist.
Born at Winnipeg on 1 February 1927 to Olive Matthams (1897-1996) and Charles “Carl” Hample (1900-1992), she was drawn to the world of dance from an early age. One of the first students of Gweneth Lloyd and Betty Farrally (co-founders of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet) at the Winnipeg Ballet School, she danced with the company from 1938 to 1948. In ensuing years she danced in Montreal, New York, and London. While in England, she appeared in musical comedy, cabarets, ballet, and in British television and film. Upon returning to Winnipeg, she performed as a guest artist with the RWB. Her husband, John Alexander Piasecki (1923-2012), whom she married in 1968, was a member of the Ballet Board of Directors and its publicity chair at the time.
Prior to her retirement from dance to raise her three children, she appeared in numerous productions at Winnipeg’s Rainbow Stage, and in two CBC-TV variety series, It’s Magic and Hit Parade. She was also an alumna of the University of Manitoba, having earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1948. Concurrently she balanced her career in dance and her life as a homemaker with a career in Laboratory Technology, working at the original Grace General Hospital, St. Boniface General Hospital, Manitoba Cancer Foundation, and the Winnipeg Municipal Hospital. Other career initiatives in Winnipeg, and in Edmonton (where she and her husband lived in retirement through the 1980s), included real estate, retail sales, and banking.
Upon returning to Winnipeg from Edmonton in 1989, she immersed herself in the dance and arts community, and was a founding member of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Alumni Association, serving several terms as President. Wanting to ensure that dance memories were preserved in a suitable archival fashion, she became a co-founder of the Winnipeg Dance Preservation Initiative.
She died at Winnipeg on 17 May 2007.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 26 May 2007.
Obituary [John Alexander Piasecki], Winnipeg Free Press, 12 May 2012.
“Margaret Alice Hample,” Piasecki Family Tree, Ancestry.
“Margaret Alice Piasecki (born Hample),” Geni World Family Tree.
This page was prepared by Lois Braun.
Page revised: 12 October 2024
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