John William Coulter (1888-1980) was a writer best known for his historical trilogy Riel (written and produced 1950; publ 1962), The Crime of Louis Riel (1968) and The Trial of Louis Riel (1968). Most of his other plays are on Irish subjects. Among them, The House in the Quiet Glen (1937) won the Dominion Drama Festival Bessborough Trophy and The Drums Are Out was premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Ireland, in 1948. With composer Healey Willan he created the first 2 operas commissioned and broadcast by the CBC: Transit through Fire (1942) and Deirdre of the Sorrows (1944). His nondramatic works include a biography of Winston Churchill and a record of his courtship, Prelude to a Marriage (1979).

- Rota Herzberg Lister, The Canadian Encyclopedia