Retirement is a concept foreign to 85-year-old Rosaleen Dickson.

After 32 years as the publisher and editor of The Equity, the Pontiac County weekly, the veteran journalist did pass responsibility for the newspaper on to her oldest son. But it seems the move simply freed her to carry on with a series of other projects, including completing a graduate degree in journalism, writing and editing several books and maintaining various websites.

The mission occupying much of her time these days is the development of the National Press Club of Canada Foundation – a matter of greater urgency since the bankrupt 80-year-old National Press Club closed its doors for the last time in May.

"I believe that there should be a national press club in Canada, so I am on a very small committee that is trying to save it," says Ms. Dickson, whose fellow committee members are Delta Media head Tim Kane, who chairs the group, and editor Eed Murad.

"A press club stands for the freedom, honesty and quality of the press. We are creating a whole new entity," she explains. "And we're very anxious that it happens in the right way. And it will happen. I couldn't have stuck with it if I hadn't been sure of that from the start."

The reason that the new press club – currently seeking charitable status – will be known as a foundation is that "it has an educational aspect," she says. "We are going to liaise with the universities and Algonquin College and deal with students studying journalism and with new people in journalism such as immigrants – people who care and want to improve the standards of journalism in some way."

Also on Ms. Dickson's current to-do list are three editing assignments – she is working on a volume of poetry, the memoirs of a Maritimer of Russian heritage and a book about trees.

"For the Love of Trees is a pure joy," says Ms. Dickson. "And the memoirs are those of a very interesting Canadian – the last of a large family who came over from Russia when he was three to settle in Nova Scotia."

The web manager of the press club and Ottawa Independent Writers' websites, she has also written two books about Internet-related subjects – HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language – the Basic Book for People Who Would Rather Do It Than Talk About It (with Rony Aoun) and Freenet for the Fun of It (with Pierre Bourque). Both were products of "finding out how to do it," when she was learning about HTML and the Internet, she says. "Through time we are presented with one medium after another, and all have been useful," says Ms. Dickson, whose master's thesis traced the evolution of the web.

Finding things out for herself seems to have been the motivation for other projects: the writing of her family history with her husband, David Dickson, for instance.

"I think it is a good example of how family histories can be interesting," she says. "Not just who begat whom but telling you the kind of things they were doing, talking about an era."

Her decision to return to university to take a graduate degree in journalism came about because she was "curious to know what they were learning in school," says Ms. Dickson, who spent a year as a journalism instructor at Ryerson University in Toronto. "They didn't have J-school when I was getting involved in newspapers. When I started, we worked with lead type and ink."

She ran the newspaper end of the family business while Mr. Dickson, a chartered accountant, handled the print shop and administration.

In 2003, the mother of six, grandmother of 17 and great-grandmother of nine graduated from Carleton University with a master's degree in journalism.

"They made a big fuss in the newspapers because I was so old," says Ms. Dickson, who was 81 when she graduated with her second degree. She graduated with her first in psychology in 1941.

Her background in psychology as well as her obvious pride in her family may have been the catalysts for The Mother-in-law Book, a collection of letters and advice on personal relationships.

"I have had a lot of response and still get letters every day," says Ms. Dickson. "I hope that I have been able to help. The longer you live, the more people you know and the more situations you come upon."