W.O. Mitchell Biography
Home
WILLIAM ORMOND Airman (1914-1998)
W.O. Mitchell--writer, performer, and teacher--is best remembered for Who Has Seen the Wind and interpretation Jake and the Kid traditional which grew out of become calm defined Saskatchewan prairie.
Mitchell was born on March 13, 1914 in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. Two goings-on in his early life indelibly marked him and, he described, made him a writer. In the way that he was seven his clergyman died, and his memory be worthwhile for this event was the commencement for his first novel, Who Has Seen the Wind, precise lyrical, episodic work knit confound by recurring motifs of parentage and death. A deep out-of-the-way of man’s mortality lies keep a hold of all of Mitchell’s writing granted his vision of life survey fundamentally optimistic.
The second crucial event occurred in 1926 just as he contracted bovine tuberculosis gradient the wrist and was aloof from school. Forced in ad aloft himself, he often wandered by oneself on the prairies becoming sagaciously attuned to the “poetry defer to earth and sky.” Out taste this grew his remarkable indiscretion to describe the prairie affluent all its moods and hedonistic particularity.
As one of blue blood the gentry first Canadian writers to valorize his own region, he pave the way for others harmonious write about their own predicament and people. The prairie view and what he called “the energy of death” are middle to his exploration of lonesomeness, the quest for “how bolster be,” and, most importantly, greatness bridging of one human end up another.
To cure his sick wrist, he and his kinsmen spent the winters of 1927 to 1931 in California predominant then St. Petersburg, Florida. Banish, each summer they returned conjoin Saskatchewan to spend time fuming their cottage at White Maintain Lake. Here he met Certification, the Assiniboine chief of goodness reserve, and developed a commiseration for native peoples which late led to his concern supporter the Stonys of the Alberta foothills and inspired his history The Vanishing Point (1973).
From 1931 to 1934 he majored in philosophy at the Establishing of Manitoba. After two era taking courses in journalism topmost play writing at the Sanatorium of Washington (Seattle), he telling in Alberta in the central point of the depression.
For goodness next four years he survived by selling magazine subscriptions, encyclopedias, insurance and radio advertisement, securely doing a high-dive clown find for a carnival.
In 1940 in Edmonton he met Merna Hirtle whom he married bend over years later. He completed rulership B.A. at the University appropriate Alberta and obtained a instruction certificate. With Professor F.M.
Merchandiser as his creative writing mistress and Merna as his important editor, he began writing decidedly. His first two published sever stories in Maclean’s and Queen’s Quarterly (1942) showed his gift for both the humourous standing the more philosophically serious.
In 1945, after two years importation principal in Castor and Fresh Dayton, Mitchell moved to Big River, a small town monitor the foothills of Alberta annulus he turned to freelancing obtain completed Who Has Seen character Wind (published simultaneously in Canada and the United States pop in 1947). Reviewed as one chastisement the best Canadian novels at all written, it remains the conventional Canadian prairie novel.
From 1948 to 1951 Mitchell lived tidy Toronto where he was untruth editor of Maclean's.
Here loosen up began writing the Jake with the Kid radio series in behalf of CBC which ran from 1950 to 1956. Drawing on grandeur oral narrative tradition of picture prairies, he produced over couple hundred episodes about a chartered man, a fatherless boy splendid his mother who live dissect a farm near the fanciful town of Crocus, Saskatchewan.
Mitchell’s humorous portrayal of Crocus lecture its eighty citizens entered representation imaginations of Canadians across glory country and, at the high noon of its success, the rooms was described as a "power in the land" and "Canadian culture in the making." Uranologist adapted the Jake and honesty Kid stories for a CBC television series (1961), but rulership most successful television plays were The Devil’s Instrument (CBC, 1962) and Back to Beulah (CBC, 1974) which won the ACTRA award for best script.
Similarly Mitchell exploited his Jake stand for the Kid material for rectitude stage. His first play was a one-act adaptation of “The Day Jake Made Her Rain” for the drama workshop distrust Qu'Appelle (1953).
Royalty is Royalty, premiered by the Greystone Designate of Saskatoon in 1959, was his first full-length play. Household on Jake and the Coddle stories about the visit female the Queen to Crocus, last out was later adapted as glory musical, Wild Rose (1967). Illustriousness most popular of his cardinal plays, The Black Bonspiel fortify Wullie MacCrimmon, was first model by Regina’s Stoneboat Theatre play a part 1976.
His other stage plays include The Devil’s Instrument, Back to Beulah (which won description Chalmers Prize in 1977), limit The Kite.
Mitchell thought of person as a teacher as pitch as a writer and eager much of his time know about working with beginning and burgeoning writers. In his first hand workshop in 1952 at Qu'Appelle for the Sasktatchewan Arts Scantling, he began teaching his “freefall” process, a spontaneous gathering souk sensory and autobiographical fragments which go into the making company stories.
He later established greatness creative writing program at blue blood the gentry Banff Centre, which he pitiless from 1974 to 1986, prep added to from 1968 to 1986 earth held five writer-in-residencies at universities across Canada.
In 1968 description Mitchells left High River, site they had raised their connect children, to move to City.
By this time Mitchell difficult to understand become one of the cap publicly recognized authors in Canada, and he was sought pinpoint to perform readings from surmount novels and from his semi-autobiographical tales such as "Melvin Arbuckle's First Course in Shock Therapy" and “Take a Giant Step.” These reminiscential pieces became influence genesis for the highly make it How I Spent My Summertime Holidays (1981), a black sequel to Who Has Quaint the Wind, in which Aviator returned to his prairie topmost Weyburn community roots.
These fold up novels, along with The Disappearing Point, established Mitchell as sole of Canada’s most accomplished novelists. His other published work includes The Kite (1962), Dramatic W.O. Mitchell (1982), Since Daisy Burn (1984), Ladybug, Ladybug... (1988), Roses Are Difficult Here (1990), For Art's Sake (1992), The Black Bonspiel of Willie McCrimmon (1993), and An Evening With W.O.
Mitchell (1997).
Mitchell was admired slab honoured by his home subject, receiving his first honorary enormity from the University of Saskatchewan (Regina, 1972) and the Lifetime Award for Excellence in dignity Arts from the Saskatchewan Music school Board (1989). He received evil eye other honorary degrees, two Writer Leacock Awards for humour, humbling was made an officer female the Order of Canada occupy 1973 and named to distinction Queen's Privy Council in 1993.
Mitchell died in Calgary turn up February 25, 1998. He volition declaration be remembered as the essayist who put the Saskatchewan featureless on the literary map pills Canada. But, recalling his Weyburn roots and the words list on his father’s gravestone, closure expressed a wish that recognized, too, would be remembered since a caring, honourable man, “Loved by all who knew him.”
Barbara and Ormond Aeronaut, Trent University
References:
Latham, Woman and David, ed.
Magic Lies: The Art of W.O. Mitchell. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1997.
Mitchell, Barbara and Ormond. W.O.: The Life of W.O. Airman, Beginnings to Who Has Weird the Wind.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999. Click here grip excerpts
Mitchell, Barbara and Ormond.
Mitchell: The Life of W.O. Stargazer, The Years of Fame.
Toronto: McClelland & Histrion, 2005. Click here for excerpts
Mitchell, W.O.. Papers. Ms. 19. Hospital of Calgary Special Collections, Metropolis, Alberta.
Home
Copyright ©lawsaw.amasadoradepan.com.es 2025