The New Brunswick Literary Times

DGAP is the unofficial name of the poetry group I joined soon after arriving in Moncton in November. We gather at the home of Kerry-Lee Powell twice a month and read our poetry, comment on each oth...

Elizabeth Brewster was no stranger to the idea of making connections. She was a prolific Canadian author who believed in the transformative power of the written word; a dedicated teacher and mentor; a loyal friend to people across the country, who counted among her intimates such Canadian literary luminaries as Dorothy Livesay, Margaret Atwood and P.K. Page; and a transplanted Maritimer who never forgot her roots, who returned to her home province almost yearly to visit with old acquaintances.

Born on Aug. 22, 1922, Brewster grew up in Chipman, a lumber, coal and brick town that offered her few opportunities.

“She came from a very difficult background,” says longtime friend and fellow New Brunswick writer, Robert Gibbs. “The family was desperately poor. They had to move around.”

But Brewster had a kind of resilience that helped her to succeed. Although poverty kept her from completing high school until most of her friends had already graduated, it didn’t deter her desire to pursue post-secondary studies. At a time when few women were obtaining university degrees, Brewster proved the naysayers wrong. She completed her BA at the University of New Brunswick in 1946, followed by an MA at Harvard University’s women’s college, Radcliffe College, in 1947. She then obtained a bachelor of library science from the University of Toronto in 1953, and a PhD from the University of Indiana in 1962. Of course, Brewster’s scholarly achievements weren’t surprising to those who knew her.

“Betty was a shy person, but incredibly strong, and so was able to make her way in the world,” remembers Nancy Bauer, another close New Brunswick writing friend. “She was a lovely, sweet, talented woman.”

Then there was her writing career, a vocation that began when Brewster was a child. In 1941, the shy young high school student entered a poetry contest in the Telegraph-Journal being judged by Canadian poet and artist P.K. Page. Brewster was one of the winners, and she and Page began a friendship that would last until Page’s death in 2010.

At UNB, Brewster became friends with local Fredericton writers such as Don Gammon and Alfred G. Bailey. They, along with some other local poets, formed The Fiddlehead in 1945, now considered Canada’s longest-running literary journal. It’s a fitting tribute, then, that the Spring 2013 issue of The Fiddlehead is publishing a selection of Brewster’s poems that appeared in the early issues.

Brewster’s first poetry chapbook, East Coast, appeared in 1951. She went on to publish more than 20 collections of poetry, a handful of novels and short-story collections, as well as two autobiographical works. But what always struck admirers of Brewster’s work was her writing style.

“She deliberately wrote plainly, and strove to make it that way,” Bauer says.

It’s a sentiment shared by Gibbs, who sees similarities between her work and that of fellow New Brunswick poet Alden Nowlan.

“There’s an integrity about her work – she didn’t bow to fashion,” Gibbs says. “Alden thought highly of her.”

During the 1950s and 1960s, Brewster worked chiefly as a librarian at several universities across the country, including Queen’s University, Mount Allison, the University of Alberta and for several years at the Legislative Library of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Then, in 1972, she became an English professor at the University of Saskatchewan, a post she held until her retirement in 1990. Brewster soon moved beyond her post to become an integral part of Saskatoon’s writing community.

“She didn’t fit in immediately, but was at the centre of it by the time she retired,” recalls David Carpenter, who taught alongside Brewster for 20 years.

Carol Morrell, another friend and longtime colleague in the English department, remembers Brewster as being “very loyal to anyone who wanted to write.” She also recalls that when Brewster was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, in 2008, the ceremony was held in a large ballroom in a downtown hotel.

“The place was full,” Morrell says. “Her work is admired widely.”

But influence is never a one-way street. Saskatchewan had a tremendous impact on Brewster. Retired English professor Paul Denham, who gave the eulogy at her funeral, points out, “Elizabeth was more prolific after she settled in Saskatoon; she was in a place to establish a network and was able to give more energy to her writing.”

More than two-thirds of her publications appeared after she moved west.

As Brewster’s reputation grew, so too did recognition for her work. In 1982, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of New Brunswick. In 1995, she received the Lifetime Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Saskatchewan Arts Board. The next year, her collection Footnotes to the Book of Job was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. In 2001, she was inducted into the Order of Canada.

But as the new millennium began, Brewster’s health began to fail. It didn’t prevent her from carrying on, though; her passion for writing was too great.

“Even when she was almost blind, she dictated her letters and poems to friends. She would even ask others to go read her work at the poetry readings for her,” Carpenter says.

Elizabeth Winifred Brewster died on Dec. 26, 2012, and is buried in Agudas Israel Jewish cemetery in Saskatoon. But she had purchased a plot and tombstone in Forest Hill Cemetery, in Fredericton, some years ago, intending to be buried there before her conversion to Judaism. Even in her passing, she will be forever connected to the places and people she loved so dearly.

– Thomas Hodd teaches Canadian literature at the Université de Moncton. He can be reached at tomhodd@gmail.com.

Marita Dachsel's Glossolalia is released this week. Glossolalia is an unflinching exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, and sexuality as told in a series of ...To mark International Women's Day (March 8), Dachsel shares with us a list of her favourite poetry by Canadian women writers.

I remember that when I was about twelve years old, my father was reading a book with a photograph of Pierre Trudeau on the cover, wearing a cape. The book was called The Northern Magus and its author was Richard Gwyn.

That memory came back to me thirty-two years later, when I found myself on the same shortlist as Mr. Gwyn (I can only refer to him as Mr. Gwyn) for the 2011 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. You can imagine my astonishment, and my wish that my father had been alive to hear my name mentioned in the same breath as Mr. Gwyn.

First prize winner in the very first Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest. 9th Annual Contest now open.

We are jammed together in the sky like caged rodents and I have seen it all, know everything about you, your doe-eyed 4H calf from another lifetime, the Mars bar you stole from Nancy Green’s ski jacket, the kitchen party that introduced your face to the beauty of the linoleum. And I know that you are flying from Edmonton to Fredericton with your mother’s ashes in the overhead compartment, the funeral home’s purple drawstring bag that is surprisingly heavy, heavy as guilt. Yet your enjoyment of carrying your old mother around

SACKVILLE, N.B. — What began as a doodle during a high school class has launched into a first full-length novel for Mount Allison University English student Taylor Losier. The Quispamsis, N.B.

Anita Lahey’s second collection of poems, Spinning Side Kick, was released by Véhicule Press in 2011. Her first book, Out to Dry in Cape Breton (2006), was nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the Ottawa Book Award, and she is a past winner of the Great Blue Heron Poetry Prize and the Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem. She served as editor of Arc Poetry Magazine from 2004 to 2011, and is also a journalist who has written on a wide range of topics for publications such as The Walrus, Cottage Life, Maisonneuve, Toronto Life, Reader’s Digest, Canadian Geographic and Quill & Quire. A former resident of Ottawa, Montreal and Fredericton, she lives in Toronto.

The collaboration between The Fiddlehead and The Malahat Review invites readers to explore the regional flavors and voices arising across Canada. The Fiddlehead, an international journal centered in Atlantic Canada, opened its doors exclusively to west coast Canadian writers in an effort to close geographic gaps. In the opening editorial letter, Editor Ross Leckie states that the special issue was meant to expose readers and writers to voices across the country, to prompt discovery of an “unidentifiable evanescent thread.”

Evanescent indeed. Despite the focus on work stemming from the west coast, a quick look through the contributor bios reveals the true essence of Canadian writing; more than a handful of ‘western’ writers featured in this issue were born and raised elsewhere, some from the US even, with all eventually migrating and settling into their western regions. Coming from a migrated Canadian who now lives in the US, I understand this meshing of regional flavors. This is quintessentially Canadian. The country may have beautifully distinguishable regions, yet the voices within them branch inward, outward, and transcend borders in original ways

he University of New Brunswick would like to invite you to a special reading by Madeleine Thien. The reading will take place on Tuesday, February 5 at 8pm in the Alumni Memorial Lounge, University of New Brunswick. 

Madeleine Thien will read from her new novel, Dogs at the Perimeter. Thien is the author of two previous works of fiction,Simple Recipes (2001), a collection of short stories, and Certainty (2006), a novel. She has received the City of Vancouver Book Award,

Vanessa Moeller is a very talented New Brunswick writer. She graduated from the University of New Brunswick with an MA in Creative Writing. Over her career her writinghas been published in multiple periodicals including Qwerty,The Fiddlehead, Prism International, The Antagonish Review, The Pottersfield Portfolio, and CV2. Also, she has received numerous awards for her writing. On top of her already great success, in 2009 she published her poetry collection entitled Our Extraordinary Monsters.