Gabrielle Roy

Gabrielle Roy --

1909-1983

Born in Saint Boniface, Manitoba Gabrielle Roy was educated at Saint Joseph’s Academy. After training as a teacher at The Winnipeg Normal School, she taught in rural schools in Marchand and Cardinal and was then appointed to Provencher School in Saint Boniface.

With her savings she was able to spend two years in Europe, returning to Canada at the outbreak of World War 11 in 1939. Gabrielle Roy decided to settle in Quebec, where she found work as a journalist for various newspapers and magazines. After her first novel, The Tin Flute, appeared in 1945, she returned to the West to escape publicity.

In August 1947, she married Marcel Carbotte, a Saint Boniface doctor, and the couple set off for Europe where Carbotte studied gynaecology and Roy spent her time writing. During this period, she wrote Where Nests the Waterhen and The Cashier, both published on her return to Quebec. Other books were to follow : Street of Riches, The Hidden Mountain, The Road past Altamont, Windflower, Enchanted Summer, Garden in the Wind and Children of my heart.

In addition to writing ten novels, three children’s books and a collection of articles entitled The Fragile Lights of Earth, Roy had also started work on her autobiography before her death in 1983. Published posthumously in 1984 under the title Enchantment and Sorrow, it covers the years from her childhood in Manitoba to the time when she settled in Quebec.

Gabrielle Roy was the recipient of many literary awards, including France’s Prix Femina and a award from the Literary Guild of America for The Fin Flute. She won the Governor General’s Award three times, the Prix David twice, the Prix Duvernay and the Molson Prize. Her works have been translated into more than fourteen languages.

The Manitoba writer who was the first woman elected to the Royal Sociey of Canada (1947) also won the Society’s Lorne Pierce Medal. In 1967 she was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.