Lydia Frances Williamson (“Richard Scrace”)

I love connection to community…

I while ago, Ed Butts, of Guelph, Ontario, sent an email asking if we had a better copy of our photo of Lydia Frances Williamson for an article he was writing. The original is from John W. Garvin, ed. Canadian Poets, 2nd ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1926), so it was easy to provide. His article has come out today in the Guelph Today news.

Butts, Ed. “Get to Know Two of Guelph’s Lesser-known Composers and Poets.” Guelph Today (26 April 2021). Web.

Hearing More Voices: English-Canadian Women in Print and on the Air, 1914-1960 (2020), by Carole Gerson and Peggy Kelly, a review by Phyllis Reeve

How dare the 1970s Children’s Literature community reject Anne of Green Gables as a “classic,” because the success of LM Montgomery‘s novels was “viewed as symptomatic of their lack of serious value”?

Like Phyllis Reeve, the reviewer of Carole Gerson and Peggy Kelly’s Hearing More Voices: English-Canadian Women in Print and on the Air, 1914-1960, I was appalled to learn of such an opinion. I’m sure that readers of my generation (interestingly, those who would have encountered Anne in the early 1970s) absolutely considered Anne of Green Gables already to be a classic. Another favourite of the reviewer is children’s author and radio presenter Mary Grannan (“Just Mary”). This is undoubtedly why she opens her review with a foray into her childhood reading, but in addition to children’s authors, Hearing More Voices presents more broadly “aspects of the lives and works of Canadian female writers and broadcasters within a tumultuous period during our socio-economic and political history: 1914-1960.” Like our CEWW project, the authors focus on lesser known writers who are all very well worth reading about.

“Easter,” by Lily Crawley

Crawley, Lily. “Easter.” Winnipeg Free Press (8 April 1939): 6.