New
Brunswick
Julia Catherine Beckwith was born on March 10, 1796 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Her mother,
Julie-Louise Le Brun, was from a wealthy French family that had immigrated to
Canada in the 17th and 18th centuries. Her father,
Nehemiah Beckwith, moved from New England in 1780 and owned a successful ship
building business. Julie-Louise had given up her Roman Catholic faith when she married,
but Julia spent a lot of her early life visiting her French cousins in Nova
Scotia and Quebec. One of her cousins became a nun of the Hotel-Dieu in
Montreal.
Her mother’s previous religious background was the source of the idea for
her first novel St. Ursula’s convent, or the
nun of Canada. She wrote it in Fredericton when she was seventeen and it
had complicated plots, romance, suspense, and heroic adventures. It was not to
be published for almost ten years.
In 1820, in order to lessen the burden on
her mother after her father’s death by drowning, Julia moved in with her aunt
in Kingston, Upper Canada (now Ontario). She married George Henry Hart on
January 3, 1822. George was a bookbinder and Julia operated a boarding
house for girls. Her novel was published in 1824 by Hugh C. Thomson as St.
Ursula’s Convent or, The Nun of Canada; Containing Scenes from Real Life. According to Beckwith’s wishes, the
author was listed as anonymous. It was the first work of fiction written by any
man or woman who had been born in Canada and the first to be published in what
is now Canada. Julia Beckwith is considered Canada’s first novelist.
Julia and her husband moved to Rochester,
NY, in 1824 where her second novel, Tonnewonte;
or, the adopted son of America, was published and portrayed
as having been written by an American. It,
too, had suspense and depth of feeling, but as some critics said it had the
same stilted expression and moral overtones as her first novel. Besides
entertainment value, Julia wrote to express attitudes toward society.
By 1831 Julia and George had six children
and they moved back to Fredericton. There she contributed to the weekly paper,
the New Brunswick Reporter. She also wrote her third book Edith
(or The Doom), which was never published.
Julia Catherine Beckwith died in Fredericton, New Brunswick on November
28, 1867, the age of 71.
Raymond Fraser was born on May
8, 1941 in Chatham (now Miramichi), New Brunswick, the youngest of three
children. His older sisters left home and his mother died when he as a
teenager. He spent a lot of his alone time reading. He attended St. Thomas
University in Fredericton. There he played sports in his freshman year and was
co-editor of the student literary magazine Tom-Tom
in his junior year.
He worked as a teacher for a year then moved to Montreal in 1965 where
he and poet Leroy Johnson created the literary magazine Intercourse: Contemporary Canadian Writing (1966-1971). He was also
one of the founders of the Montreal Story Tellers Fiction Performance Group,
which put on readings in local high schools. To earn money while writing he
worked as an editor, chief staff writer, and a freelance writer for the tabloid
newspapers. Fraser’s first book of short stories, The Black Horse Tavern, was published in 1973.
Raymond Fraser and his wife, Sharon,
travelled through Europe during the 1970s. The Struggle Outside
came out in 1975 and The Bonnonbridge
Musicians in 1978. The Bonnonbridge
Musicians was a finalist for the 1978 Governor General Literary Award for
Fiction.
He finally settled in Fredericton and began writing full time.
He also was the Writer-In-Residence at the Fredericton High School.
Raymond Fraser wrote a total of eight
books of poetry and fourteen novels and short story collections, five of which
were listed in Atlantic Canada’s 100
Greatest Books (2009). He also received the first Lieutenant-Governor’s
Award for High Achievement in the Arts that year. He became a member of the
Order of New Brunswick in 2012 and received an honorary Doctor of Letters
degree from St. Thomas University in 2016.
Fraser died in Fredericton on October 22, 2018, at the age of 77 from
cancer.
