Famous Canadian Authors from Quebec

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Canadian Authors

Quebec

Marie-Rose-Emma-Gabrielle Roy was born on March 22, 1909, in Saint Boniface, Manitoba, which is now part of Winnipeg. After her early education she took teacher training at the Winnipeg Normal School. She taught in rural schools in Manitoba until she was appointed to the Institut Collegial Provencher in Saint Boniface. She saved her money and moved to France and England to study drama but after two years returned to Canada when WWII broke out in 1939. She settled in Montreal and earned a living as a sketch artist while writing. She became a freelance journalist for La Revue Moderne and Le Bulletin des agriculteurs.
     Ms. Roy’s first novel, Bonheur d'occasion (1945) was an accurate portrayal of Saint-Henri, a poverty-stricken neighbourhood of Montreal. It was published in French, earning her the Prix Femina award in 1947. The book was also published in English under the title The Tin Flute and won the Governor General Award for fiction as well as the Royal Society of Canada’s Lorne Pierce Medal. It was the first major Canadian urban novel.
     The novel sold almost a million copies in the United States and the Literary Guild of America made the novel a feature book of the month in 1947. Because of all the attention the book received, Gabrielle moved to Saint Boniface to escape the publicity. There she met a doctor, Marcel Carbotte and three months later, in August, they married. They headed to Paris for the next three years where Carbotte studied gynecology and Roy wrote. On their return to Canada in 1950, they settled in Montreal for a couple of years and then moved to Quebec City. Carbotte took up a position at the Hôpital du Saint-Sacrement and they lived in an apartment. Wanting a quiet place to write, Grabrielle bought a cottage in Petite-Rivière-Saint-François, Charlevoix County. There she wrote the bulk of her work. In total, she wrote twenty books.
     Gabrielle and her husband didn’t have any children. Besides writing she travelled around the world and spent time visiting her family.
     Gabrielle Roy is considered to be one of the most important Francophone writers in Canadian history and one of the most influential Canadian authors. She became a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1967 and won many awards, including the Governor General Award three times. She was on the panel in 1963 that gave the Expo ’67, Montreal World's Fair and Canada’s 100^th birthday celebration, its theme: Man and His World (Terre des hommes).
     Gabrielle Roy died of a heart attack on July 13, 1983, at the age of seventy-four. Her autobiography, La Détresse et l'enchantement, was published posthumously in 1984 and the English translation, Enchantment and Sorrow won the Governor General Award in 1987.
     In 2004 the Government issued a $20.00 bank note in its Canadian Journey Series which had a quotation from her 1961 novel, The Hidden Mountain: Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?

 Mordecai Richler was born on January 27, 1931, in Montreal, QC. He was raised on St. Urbain Street and learned how to speak English, French, and Yiddish. He studied at Sir George Will College (Concordia University) but left before getting a degree. He moved to Paris at nineteen and lived there for two years before returning to Montreal. He worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) for a short time then moved to London, England in 1954 where he married Catherine Boudreau. She was a non-Jewish French-Canadian divorcee who was nine years older. Just before their wedding he met and was infatuated by another non-Jewish woman Florence Wood Mann, who was the wife on his close friend, Stanley Mann.

     While in England he wrote and had published seven novels, the most well-known one being The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959). The story was about Richler’s favourite theme: the hardships of Jewish life around St. Urbain Street in Montreal in the 1930s and 1940s. He wrote a screen play for the novel and it was made into a film in 1974 starring Richard Dreyfuss. In 1960 Richler divorced his wife and Florence divorced her husband and they were married in 1961. Mordecai adopted her son and they had four more children.
     Richler and his family returned to Montreal in 1972. A compilation of his humorous essays was collected into Notes on an Endangered Species and Others (1974). He also wrote the Jacob Two-Two series of children’s fantasy books (1975, 1987, and 1995). His novel Joshua Then and Now was published in 1980 and made into a film in 1985.
     Besides writing novels, Richler also contributed articles to magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Look, The New Yorker, and The American Spectator. He wrote a column for The National Post and Montreal’s The Gazette and wrote book reviews for Gentleman’s Quarterly.
     His last novel, Barney’s Version (1997) was based on the events surrounding his divorce and remarriage. Barney’s Version was made into a film in 2010.
     Richler was awarded the Order of Canada in 1999. He died of cancer on July 3, 2001, at the age of 70.

Canadian Authors from New Brunswick

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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 17^th and 18^th 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.

Famous Canadian Author from Manitoba

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Manitoba

Margaret Laurence was born Jean Margaret Wemyss in the small town of Neepawa, Manitoba, on July 18, 1926. He mother died when she was four and her father remarried a year later. Her father and step mother adopted a boy. Unfortunately Margaret’s father died of pneumonia in 1935 so the three of them moved in with her grandfather.

     When Margaret was eighteen she moved to Winnipeg to attend United College, an arts and theology college associated with the University of Manitoba. She quickly had some poems published in the university’s student newspaper, The Manitoban, under the name Steve Lancaster. She said she got the name from the Lancaster bomber, an airplane used during WWII.

     During her first year she joined the English Club, a student organization for writers. She also met with other students who were as enthusiastic about writing as she was at a place called Tony’s in the basement of the United College. She was also the associate editor of Vox, the college’s literary journal. She had more of her works featured in local publications as well. While pursuing her undergraduate studies she had one critical essay, three short stories and eighteen poems published.

     After her graduation Jean Margaret Wemyss married Jack Fergus Laurence, an engineer. Because of Jack’s job they moved to England for a year, then British Somaliland for two and onto the Gold Coast for five years. During this time Margaret grew to love Africa, its peoples, and its land and began recording and translating their folk tales and poetry. A tree for Poverty: Somali Poetry and Prose was published in 1954.

     Margaret and Jack had a daughter in 1952 and a son in 1955. The family moved to Vancouver, B.C. in 1957 where they lived for five years. During this time Margaret’s first novel, This Side Jordan, was published in 1960. This book plus, The Prophet’s Camel Bell (1963) and The Tomorrow Tamer (1963), were all based on her time in Africa. After her return to Canada she wrote The Stone Angel (1964), her best known novel. It is set in Manawaka, a fictional small town in Manitoba. The novel is about a ninety-year-old woman whose story alternates between her memories of the past and her present activities. For years the novel was required reading in many North American schools and colleges.

     Margaret filed for divorce from her husband in 1962 and moved to London, England for a year and then to Penn, Buckinghamshire. During this time she wrote A Jest of God (1966) for which she won a Governor General Award. The couple’s divorce was finalized in 1969 and Margaret returned to Canada to be writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto. After a few years she moved to Lakefield, ON and bought a cabin on the Otonabee River, near Peterborough, ON.

     In 1972 she was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada. While at the cabin she wrote The Diviners which was published in 1974 and which won her, her second Governor General’s Award. On March 3, 1976, Margaret, along with five fellow Canadian writers, founded the Writer’s Trust, a charitable organization which provides financial support to Canadian writers. After completing Heart of a Stranger, a collection of essays, (1977), Margaret began writing children’s stories.

     The National Film Board of Canada filmed a documentary titled Margaret Laurence: First Lady of Manawaka. It aired 1978. She served as Chancellor of Trent University in Peterborough from 1981 to 1983.

     In 1986, Margaret Laurence, one of Canada's most esteemed and beloved authors, was diagnosed with lung cancer. The disease had spread to other organs and there was no treatment offered except palliative care. All her novels were about strong women and rather than put herself and her family through needless suffering, Margaret Laurence took a drug overdose on January 5, 1987. She documented her decision in writing. She was buried in the Neepawa Cemetery, in Neepawa, Manitoba.

     Her novel, The Stone Angel, was made into a feature-length film staring Ellen Burstyn. It premiered in the fall of 2007

     In 2016, Jean Margaret Wemyss Laurence was named a National Historic Person.

Famous Canadian Authors from Saskatchewan

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Saskatchewan

William Ormond (W.O.) Mitchell was born on March 13, 1914 in Weyburn Saskatchewan. His father died when he was seven and he contracted bovine tuberculosis of his wrist when he was twelve. The disease is contagious and it is spread by contact between infected domestic animals, such as cattle, and humans. It can be spread through inhaling infected droplets from coughing or by contact with a wound. He had to withdraw from school and spent his time wandering the open prairie around the town. Through this he became attuned to the beauty, vibrancy, and energy of the land. This would play a major role in this later writing.

     In an effort to cure his TB his family spent the winters from 1927 to 1931 in California and later Florida. They returned to their cottage on White Bear Lake in Saskatchewan each summer. W.O. majored in philosophy at the University of Manitoba, studied journalism and play writing at the University of Washington in Seattle, then spent four years working odd jobs in Alberta. He got his teaching certificate through the University of Alberta and married Merna Hirtle in 1942. He also had two short stories published in Maclean’s and Queen’s Quarterly that same year.

     Mitchell spent the next couple of years as a principal in small town schools then he and his wife moved to High River, just south of Calgary, where he began freelance writing. His first novel Who Has Seen the Wind was published in 1947 and was loosely based on his father’s death. It has been called one of the best Canadian books ever written.

     William moved to Toronto in 1948 and became the fiction editor at Maclean’s. He also began writing his radio series Jake and the Kid for CBC. The series, which ran from 1950 to 1956 had over two hundred episodes and was about a fatherless boy, his mother, and a hired hand who lived on a farm in Saskatchewan. Mitchell adapted the story into a CBC television series in 1961. He also had two very successful plays, The Devil’s Instrument (1962) and Back to Beulah (1974) televised on CBC. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s he wrote many plays that were featured in theatres throughout Saskatchewan.

     By the time the Mitchells moved to Calgary in 1968, W.O. was one of the most recognized authors in Canada. He held readings and book signings across the country. Besides his radio, television and stage plays Mitchell wrote a total of nine books. He spent much of his time putting on workshops for aspiring and established writers. He founded and ran the creative writing program at the Banff Centre from 1974 to 1986.

     William received nine honorary degrees, two Stephen Leacock Awards for humour, a Lifetime Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Saskatchewan Arts Board, became an officer of the Order of Canada, and was named to the Queen’s Privy Council.

     W.O. Mitchell died in Calgary on February 25, 1998. He is remembered as the author who put the Saskatchewan prairie on the literary map of Canada.