Alice Boissonneau
Alice Irene Boissonneau, née Eedy (1918 - 2007) was a Canadian writer and social worker.[1] She was most noted for her 1976 novel Eileen McCullough, which was a shortlisted finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1977.[2]
Background
[edit]Born in Walkerton, Ontario,[3] and raised in St. Mary's, Ontario, she was the daughter of Lorne Eedy, a publisher of the St. Mary's Journal-Argus.[4] Her older sister, Helen Elizabeth Eedy, was the wife of politician James Elisha Brown,[5] and later remarried to Northrop Frye in 1988 after Brown's death.[6]
She was educated at the University of Toronto's Victoria College, and began her career as a hospital social worker in Toronto,[7] also serving on Toronto's municipal housing committee in the 1940s.[8]
Career
[edit]After marrying forestry worker Arthur Boissonneau, she took up writing, with her short stories and poetry appearing in various Canadian literary magazines, and radio dramas broadcast by CBC Radio,[9] prior to the publication of Eileen McCullogh in 1976.[10] The novel's titular character was a young woman in Toronto in the World War II era who found herself a single mother after a brief affair with a soldier and was forced to take low-paying working class jobs to support herself and her child.[11]
She published There Will Be Gardens, a memoir of her time in Toronto in the 1940s, in 1992,[12] and followed up with her second and final novel, A Sudden Brightness, in 1994.[3]
In late life she lived in Guelph, Ontario, where she died in 2007.[13] Following her death, her neighbour Marlene Santin established a charitable program, Pets for Alice, in her memory to help cover the costs of pet adoption and care for senior citizens.[14]
References
[edit]- ↑ Norman Snider, "The poetry of the pavements". Toronto Star, March 14, 1992.
- ↑ "Two writers to share award for first novels in Canada". Ottawa Citizen, March 29, 1977.
- 1 2 Cherry Clayton, "Pressed Between the Pages of Balzac - Cherry Clayton speaks with Alice Boissonneau". Books in Canada, September 1999.
- ↑ "Publisher In Love With City". Victoria Daily Times, July 12, 1928.
- ↑ "Weddings: Brown-Eedy". Toronto Star, July 29, 1940.
- ↑ Rosemary Sexton, "Northrop Frye wedding celebrated by friends". The Globe and Mail, September 20, 1988.
- ↑ William French, "A woman works in Garners' world". The Globe and Mail, February 1, 1977.
- ↑ "Will Probe Housing". Toronto Star, June 4, 1943.
- ↑ "On the Air". Montreal Gazette, May 10, 1975.
- ↑ Lloyd Bibby, "It hides a tender story". Waterloo Region Record, January 8, 1977.
- ↑ Marjorie Wild, "Sensitive novel". Hamilton Spectator, December 11, 1976.
- ↑ Eve Drobot, "Mining the sour, sad stillness that is Toronto". The Globe and Mail, April 4, 1992.
- ↑ "Boissonneau, Alice Irene". Guelph Mercury, December 15, 2007.
- ↑ Tony Saxon, "Fred and Nipper a purrfect pair". Guelph Mercury Tribune, November 29, 2015.
- 1918 births
- 2007 deaths
- 20th-century Canadian dramatists and playwrights
- 20th-century Canadian novelists
- 20th-century Canadian poets
- 20th-century Canadian women poets
- 20th-century Canadian memoirists
- 20th-century Canadian short story writers
- 20th-century Canadian women novelists
- Canadian women memoirists
- Canadian women dramatists and playwrights
- Canadian women short story writers
- Canadian radio writers
- Canadian social workers
- People from Bruce County
- People from St. Mary's, Ontario
- Poets from Toronto
- University of Toronto alumni
- Novelists from Toronto