Irene Catelle Alexander (nee Porter) was born on May 24, 1922 in Montreal. She lived there for two years before the family migration across Canada began. They lived in Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, finally settling in Vancouver.

After completing grade ten at Britannia High School, Irene received a scholarship to attend the Vancouver School of Art. While attending she came under the influence of Grace Melvin, the instructor for lettering and illuminating, excelling in her course. She completed the first year of art school in Applied Arts and Design and received another scholarship to attend the second year. Because of the financial circumstances of her family during the 1930s, she was required to forgo her second year and get a job.

At the age of seventeen, Irene began her career in the advertising department at Woodward's on Hastings Street. She became head show card writer, hand lettering sale and information cards. While working at Woodward's she designed the brush lettered logo that was seen on all their bags, signs and ads for many decades. It was mandatory in those days that if a female employee married, they had to leave their job, so in 1949 she retired from Woodward's to marry Vancouver artist Robert Samuel Alexander (Rab), an honours graduate from VSA and the Art Students League in New York.

Irene's ex boss at Woodward's commissioned her to letter the retirement scrolls for retiring Woodward employees and so began her freelance career. She looked for more freelance work at printing companies, government agencies, professional societies and built up a successful hand lettering business. She gave a few of Vancouver's graphic designers and freelance calligraphers some of their first commissions by hiring them to assist her or putting their names forward to do some very high profile projects. Some recipients of her work include the Van Dusen family, Jack Diamond and Prince Philip. Rab and Irene collaborated on some projects together and formed a business, the original Studio Workshop . This name was later appropriated by an organized group.

Irene was a working mother juggling a home based business and raising children making her a pioneer and role model for the next generation. She had her first daughter in 1951, another in 1953 and the last in 1961. The girls were often called upon to help process the annual Christmas cards that Rab and Irene designed giving them a real appreciation for their parents' work.

Irene's interest in heraldry grew over the years and benefited greatly from her husband's knowledge. Rab designed and reproduced intricate heraldic designs for a bronze forgery located in Vancouver in the sixties. He would create small three dimensional crests out of beeswax and molding putty which would then be cast in bronze for very specific clients. Any work Irene received that required the reproduction of a coat of arms, Rab would sometimes be called upon to execute it with Irene adding the lettering. In the early seventies, Rab designed his own achievement, which he submitted to the Lyon Court for a grant of arms. Unfortunately, he died in April 1974, before the grant was completed.

After Rab's death, Irene continued her career working right up and into her eighties. She was a founding member of the Westcoast Calligraphy Society originally named the Italic Handwriting Society, a branch of the one in England. During the seventies , Irene established many of the original calligraphy classes both here in the lower mainland as well as the summer art school program in the interior and enjoyed teaching for many years. In 1980 she organized a very successful calligraphy tour to England for a few lucky members of the Society which included, as one of many highlights, dinner with the Lancaster Herald. During the seventies and eighties Rob Watt commissioned Irene to do the calligraphy on many of the patents for British Columbia recipients.

Irene still lives in the house she and Rab built in the forties in Pemberton Heights, North Vancouver.

Honours and awards

• 1985 Fellow of the Royal Heraldry Society of Canada