Canadian Authors by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

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 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 renowned authors and books going all the way back to the 18^th 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.