Sandra Dean

Sandra Dean is a Canadian church musician and hymn writer associated with Ottawa. Contemporary worship notes identify her as director of music at Southminster United Church when she wrote A Candle Is Burning in 1986 for that congregation. The text was designed for the progressive lighting of the Advent wreath and extends through the lighting of the Christ candle at Christmas.

Its inclusion as hymn 6 in Voices United, published by the United Church of Canada in 1996, gave Dean's work a durable place in Canadian congregational worship. The text is paired there with James R. Murray's nineteenth-century tune MUELLER. Hymnary indexes this as Dean's only hymnal text, although church bulletins and seasonal worship resources document use beyond the one hymnal instance.

Reliable public sources do not establish Dean's birth date, education, ordination, or a broader catalog of compositions. Those details should therefore remain unstated. Her documented significance rests on this concise liturgical song, which gives a congregation a repeatable musical response as the Advent candles of hope, peace, joy, and love lead toward the celebration of Christ.