Monday, April 7, 2025
A Gift From A Book by Eileen O'Finlan

Monday, March 24, 2025
Canadian Authors by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey
https://books2read.com/Romancing-the-Klondike
https://books2read.com/Rushing-the-Klondike
https://books2read.com/Sleuthing-the-Klondike
https://bwlpublishing.ca/donaldson-yarmey-joan/
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 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 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.
Ontario
William Robertson Davies was born August 28, 1913 in Thamesville, Ontario (ON). He grew up surrounded by books and he participated in theatrical productions, developing a lifelong love of drama. He attended Upper Canada College then studied at Queen’s University at Kingston, ON. He moved to Oxford, England where he received a Bachelor Degree in Literature from Balliol College in 1938. His thesis, Shakespeare’s Boy Actors, was published in 1939 and he began acting in London.
William married Brenda Mathews, an Australian who was working as a stage manager. They moved to Canada in 1940 and he began a career as literary editor at Saturday Night magazine. Their first child was born in December 1940. Two years later he accepted the position of editor of the Peterborough Examiner in Peterborough, ON. During this time he wrote humorous essays under the name Samuel Marchbanks and wrote and produced many stage plays.
In 1947, several of his essays were published in The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, and The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks came out in 1949. Davies used his early upbringing to provide themes for his novels and his first novel Tempest Tost was published in 1951. His second, Leaven of Malice, came out in 1954. In 1955 he became publisher of the Peterborough Examiner and his third novel, A Mixture of Frailties was published in 1958.
Besides novel and play writing, and being a newspaper publisher, Davies taught literature at Trinity College at the University of Toronto from 1960 until 1981. He left his post as publisher of the Peterborough Examiner in 1962 and became a Master of Massey College, the University of Toronto’s new graduate college, in 1963. Along with his father William Rupert Davies and his brother Arthur Davies, William bought the Kingston Whig-Standard newspaper, CHEX-AM and CKWS-AM radio stations, and CHEX-TV and CKWS-TV television stations. His third book of essays, Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack was published in 1967.
William Robertson Davies wrote a total of eighteen fiction and non-fiction books, plus fifteen plays. He won many awards for his writing including the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. He was named a Companion of the Order of Canada.
William Robertson Davies died on December 2, 1995, in Orangeville ON.
Josiah Henson was born on June 15, 1789, into slavery in Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland. When his family was separated by each being sold to different plantations, his mother pleaded with her new owner, Isaac Riley, to buy her youngest son so she would have him with her. Riley agreed and Josiah came to work for him. Josiah was twenty-two years-of-age when he married. He also became a Methodist Minister and was made the supervisor of his master's farm.
In 1825, Mr. Riley fell on hard times and was sued by a brother-in-law. Henson guided eighteen of Riley’s slaves to Riley’s brother’s plantation in Kentucky. When he returned and asked to buy his freedom from Riley for $450.00 (350.00 cash and $100.00 IOU), Riley added an extra zero to the IOU. Cheated of his money, Henson returned to Kentucky. In 1830, he learned that he might be sold again so he, his wife, and their four children escaped to Kent County, in Upper Canada (now Ontario), which had been a refuge for slaves since 1793. That was the year Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe passed: An Act to prevent the further introduction of Slaves, and limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province. While the legislation did not immediately end slavery, it did prevent the importation of slaves and so any United States slave who entered the province was automatically free.
Josiah Henson worked on farms in Upper Canada before moving with friends to Colchester to set up a Black settlement on rented land. He eventually was able to buy 200 acres in Dawn Township and made the community self-sufficient. The settlement reached a population of 500 at its height, earning money by exporting black walnut lumber to the United States and Britain. Henson purchased an adjoining 200 acres for his family to live on.
Henson served in the Canadian Army as a military officer. He led a black militia unit in the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-38. When slavery was abolished in the United States many residents of the Dawn Settlement returned to their original home. Josiah Henson and his wife had eight more children in Upper Canada and he remarried a widow from Boston when his first wife died. He continued to live in Dawn for the rest of his life and many of his descendants still live in the area.
Henson wrote his autobiography The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as narrated by Himself. It was published in 1849 and many believe he inspired the main character in Harriet Beecher Stowes’ Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Henson then expanded his memoir and published it as Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life which came out in 1858. Since people were still interested in his life, in 1876 his story was updated and published as Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life: An autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson.
Josiah Henson died on May 5, 1883 at the age of ninety-four.

Thursday, March 13, 2025
Take Me to the Mardi Gras
Have you ever been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras?
Having just returned from my first, let me recommend it to you.
Here are some things to know:
1. It's not a day, it's a season! Mardi Gras in New Orleans is known as Carnival Season. It begins on Little Christmas--January 6th and lasts until Fat Tuesday...the day before the Easter Lenten Season begins. This date changes every year.
There are events, balls, parties, and parades galore uptown, downtown, the French Quarter and the suburbs of New Orleans. They get bigger and more frequent as the season goes on.
2. King Cake is served throughout...King Cake is a beautiful confection that comes in many forms--sweet and savory. Wow, it's delicious! Everywhere you visit to socialize during the season, bring a King Cake and you'll be most welcome. And yes, there is a baby in it.
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King Cake...can you find the baby? |
New Orleans food is fantastic. Have you ever had the delightful donut-like confection called beignets? If you go to the African American Museum in Treme you'll find the Calas Cafe, serving beignet's predecessors: calas..made with rice instead of wheat flour and first created by enslaved people on the 17th century streets of New Orleans. It's served with lemon curd.
![]() |
With Chef Brendon at the Calas Cafe |
![]() |
Calas with lemon curd...yum! |
3. Carnival Season is all about Family. You've probably seen some lurid images of Mardi Gras. (and yes, as my daughter tells most of her hotel guests..."nothing good happens after midnight, so get in by then.") But the season is all about family...from float participants making sure all the children get thrown beads and toys, to accomplished high school marching bands and cheering squads, to lesser known krewes (sponsors of parade marches and floats) like Krewe of Barkus ... dog lovers dressing up their pooches (many who need to be adopted by loving folks), and 'Tit Rex with its tiny wagon-pulled floats that imitate the gigantic ones, to the fantastic Black Masking Indians who visit the elderly who are no longer able to stand on parade routes. These wonderful dancers visit their elders on their stoops and porches. They also honor the Native Americans who took in and hid their enslaved ancestors.
![]() |
Black Masking Indians look fantastic! |
4. New Orleanians love the lost art of conversation, consisting of the fine arts of listening and expressing curiosity. So get ready to learn things about people from all over the world during Mardi Gras.
5. Don't forget the music...it is everywhere! From jazz to classical to down-bayou Cajun. What a gumbo of delightful sounds, with places like the New Orleans Jazz Museum offering free concerts at least twice a week. Here's the wonderful Christien Bold and his band scatting some Duke Ellington at an afternoon performance...
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Christien Bold and band keep Jazz thriving! |
6. EVERYTHING is political! My daughter organizes mini krewes among her friends for Mardi Gras day marching downtown into Jackson Square. This year Ed and I joined in as personifications of our wonderful U.S. National Parks. We thought this non-political, until their funding started being slashed. So we added 500 stamped post cards to pass out to folks who chose to notify our elected representatives that we are NOT pleased with this decision!
![]() |
Krewe Save Our National Parks |
I hope you'll visit the beautiful Big Easy any time, but especially when it's all decked out for Mardi Gras!
Friday, March 7, 2025
The Unexpected Gift Inside a Book by Eileen O'Finlan

Thursday, February 6, 2025
Meet Buster Parker by Eileen O'Finlan

Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Meet Smokey and Autumn Amelia by Eileen O'Finlan
Quirks: She gets the zoomies about an hour before a storm and when excited. If it happens at work, she has to go to the basement to keep from zooming around the office.

Saturday, August 24, 2024
Canadian Authors-Quebec by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey
https://books2read.com/u/mKJxdd
https://books2read.com/u/mYgK6x
https://bwlpublishing.ca/donaldson-yarmey-joan/
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 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 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.
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 100th 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.

Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Canadian Authors--New Brunswick by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey
https://books2read.com/Romancing-the-Klondike
https://books2read.com/Rushing-the-Klondike
https://books2read.com/Sleuthing-the-Klondike
https://bwlpublishing.ca/donaldson-yarmey-joan/
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 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 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.
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.

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