March 22 is the birthday of Gabrielle Roy, one of Canada’s best-loved authors.
Roy was born in a working-class family in Saint-Boniface, Manitoba in 1909, the youngest of eleven children of Mélina and Léon Roy.
She trained as a teacher at the Winnipeg Normal School and taught for some time in rural Manitoba and St. Boniface, then left in 1937 to study in France and England. Roy described her years teaching as the most beautiful years of her life.
Roy returned in 1939, and she made her home in Montreal, Quebec, working as a freelance reporter.
It is said that her mother passed her love of storytelling on to Gabrielle at a young age. Roy’s first novel, Bonheur d’occasion, started as a newspaper article but grew and took on a life of its own. It was published in 1945 and won Roy the prestigious Prix-Femina of France and the Governor General’s award for her English translation, The Tin Flute.
In 1947, Roy married Dr. Marcel Carbotte, and they moved to France for three years so Marcel could pursue his medical studies. In 1950, Roy and Carbotte moved to Quebec City, then bought a summer cottage in Petite-Rivière-Saint-François.
Roy wrote many more successful novels and won three Governor General’s awards. She died in 1983 in Quebec City.
My colleague, Vanessa Lisabelle, recently wrote about a new TV series celebrating Roy’s life, Le Monde de Gabrielle Roy, available on TOU.tv.
Image: Famille de Gabrielle Roy en 1911 (Gabrielle: front and centre), Société historique de Saint-Boniface
Catherine Fisher, blogger
