Margaret Laurence

John Hugh MacLennan, CC, CQ was a Canadian author and professor of English at McGill University. He won five Governor General's Awards and a Royal Bank Award. MacLennan was born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia on March 20, 1907. His parents were Dr. Samuel MacLennan, a colliery physician, and Katherine... MacQuerrie; Hugh also had an older sister named Frances. Samuel was a stern Calvinist, while Katherine was creative, warm and dreamy, and both parents would be large influences on Hugh's character. In 1913, the family spent several months in London while Samuel took on further study to become a medical specialist. On returning to Canada, they briefly lived in Sydney, Nova Scotia before settling in Halifax. In December 1917, young Hugh experienced the Halifax Explosion, which he would later write about in his first published novel, Barometer Rising. From the ages of twelve to twenty-one, he slept in a tent in the family's backyard, even in the cold winter, possibly as an escape from his strict father.
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Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, OC OBC FRSC was a Canadian poet who twice won the Governor General's Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada" during the 1970s and 1980s. Livesay was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her mother, Florence Randal Livesay, was a poet and... journalist; her father, J.F.B. Livesay was the General Manager of Canadian Press. Livesay moved to Toronto, Ontario, with her family in 1920. She graduated with a BA in 1931 from Trinity College in the University of Toronto and received a diploma from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Social Work in 1934. She also studied at the University of British Columbia and the Sorbonne. In 1931 in Paris, Livesay became a committed Communist. She joined the Communist Party of Canada in 1933, and was active in a number of its front organizations: the Canadian Labour Defense League, the Canadian League Against War and Fascism, Friends of the Soviet Union, and the Workers’ Unity League. In 1937 she married Duncan Macnair, they had two children Peter Macnair and Marcia.
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