https://books2read.com/Sleuthing-the-Klondike
Canadian Authors
I
am a proud Canadian author of over twenty fiction and non-fiction books
in my long writing career. But I am just one of thousands of published
writers from this huge country. Canada has had a long and illustrious
history
of producing world renown authors and books going all the way back to
the 18th
century.
Frances Moore was born in England in 1724. She was a well-known poet
and playwright in England before she and her husband, Reverend John Brooke
moved to Quebec City in 1763, for John to take up the post of army chaplain. During
her time there Frances wrote The History
of Emily Montague, a love story set in the newly formed Quebec province.
The story is told through the voices of her characters by way of personal
letters between the two. This is known as the epistolary (of letters) type of
writing and it was popular during the1700s in Europe. The Brookes’ returned to
England in 1768 and the novel was published in 1769 by the London bookseller,
James Dodsley. The History of Emily
Montague was the first novel written in what is now Canada and the first
with a Canadian setting. Frances died in 1789.
The following gives a brief history of two authors from the province of Newfoundland/Labrador.
Margaret Iris Duley was born
on September 27, 1894, in St. John’s, in the colony of Newfoundland
(Newfoundland didn’t become a province of Canada until 1949). Her father,
Thomas Duley, had emigrated from Birmingham, England, while her mother,
Tryphena Soper was born in Carbonear, NFL. Margaret graduated from the
Methodist College in St. John’s in 1910, and in 1911 she and her family went to
England for a relative’s wedding. She decided to stay and study drama and
elocution (distinct pronunciation and articulation of speech) at the London
Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Unfortunately, she had to return home when
WWI broke out in Europe.
Duley worked at the Women’s Patriotic Association to raise money and
supplies for the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Her older brother was injured
during the war and her younger brother was killed.
Duley’s father died in 1920 and left her an income of $250 a year. This
allowed her some freedom and she joined the Ladies Reading Room and the Current
Events Club. This club produced many leaders of the Newfoundland women’s
suffrage movement. She was also a supporter of the Women’s Franchise League who
petitioned island-wide for women to vote. The Newfoundland government passed a
suffrage bill in March 1925, allowing women to vote at age 25, men at 21. In the 1928 general election, 90 per cent of women eligible to vote
cast a ballot.
In 1928, during a boat trip to the Labrador coast with her brother, a
seagull with eyes like yellow ice hovered
in front of Margaret. She used this fierce, yellow-eyed image in her first book
titled, The Eyes of the Gull. It is
the story of a thirty-year-old woman who wants to escape her outport life and leave
an overpowering mother.
Margaret’s second novel, Cold
Pastoral, was published in 1939. It is about an orphaned young girl who is
adopted into a wealthy family in St. John’s and is loosely based on a real case
of a child lost in the woods.
During WWII Margaret worked for the Women’s Patriotic Association and
the St. John’s Ambulance. Later she because the Public Relations Officer for
the Red Cross and started writing newspaper articles. In her third novel, Highway to Valour (1941), Margaret used
the 1929 tidal wave that struck the Burin Peninsula as a backdrop for the life
of the young heroine. Her fourth book Novelty
on Earth was published in 1942 and the Caribou
Hut (1949) was based on her volunteer work at the Caribou Hut, a hostel for
returning servicemen. All her novels had a strong female characters.
During this time she also did interviews and broadcast talks on CJON, a
local radio station. The station sent her to England in 1952 to transmit
stories on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.
Margaret developed Parkinson’s
disease and her health started to decline in 1955. She was unable to hold a pen
by 1959 and moved in with her sister-in-law. She lived with her until her death
on March 22, 1968, at the age of seventy-three.
Margaret Iris Duley is considered
Newfoundland’s first novelist (female or male) and was the first Newfoundland
writer to gain an international audience. She was loved in England and
the United States for her novels, yet belittled at home for her outspoken views
on women’s rights and her novels’ bold portrayal of the female perspective. Her
niece, author Margot Duley, described her as a free thinking, free spirited, outspoken and charismatic personality
in a society where this was not encouraged.
A Parks Canada historic plaque dedicated to Margaret Iris Duley is attached
to the Education Building on the campus of the Memorial University in St.
John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Her home at 51 Rennies Mill Road is part of
a Women’s History Walking Tour of St. John’s. She was designated a National
Historic Person by Parks Canada in September, 2007.
Edwin John Dove
Pratt
was born on February 4, 1882 in Western Bay, in the colony of Newfoundland
(Newfoundland didn’t become a province of Canada until 1949). His father was a Methodist
Minister and was posted to many different communities so Edwin moved around a
lot during his childhood. He graduated from Newfoundland’s Methodist College in
St. John’s in 1901. Three years later he became a candidate for the Methodist ministry
and served a three-year probation before entering Victoria College at the University
of Toronto.
E.J. Pratt’s first published poem, A Poem on the May Examinations, was printed
in Acta Victoriana in 1909. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1911 and
his Bachelor of Divinity in 1913. He was ordained as a minister and served as
an Assistant Minister in Streetsville, Ontario and joined the University of
Toronto as a lecturer in psychology. He also continued to take classes and
earned his PhD in 1917. He self-published a long poem, Rachel: A Sea Story of Newfoundland that same year. Edwin married Viola
Whitney whom he had met at Victoria College in 1918. His first traditionally
published works, a poetry collection called Newfoundland
Verse came out in 1923. He also published a number of reviews and articles
over the years plus eighteen more books of poetry.
Edwin Pratt started the Canadian Poetry
Magazine in 1935 and was its editor for the next eight years. He won the
Governor General’s Award for poetry three times, was appointed Companion of the
Order of St. Michael and St George, and awarded the Canada Council Medal for
distinction in literature in 1961. He died April 26, 1962 at the age of
eight-two.
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Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Road-Tripping.../dp/0228639352
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