Lynne Bowen

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Lynne Bowen (* 22. August 1940 in Indian Head , Saskatchewan ) is one Canadian non-fiction - writer , historian, journalist and university lecturer who predominantly popular science in the field books on the history of British Columbia emerged and among others, the Eaton's British Columbia Book Award (1983), the Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Writing British Columbia History (1987), and the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (1993).

Life

Lynne Bowen was born in Indian Head, Saskatchewan, in 1940 and grew up in Calgary and Hinton , Alberta . She first trained as a nurse at the University of Alberta , worked for the health department, got married and raised three children. In the meantime she moved to British Columbia in 1972, where she still lives in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island . The late career decided to study history at the University of Victoria just for fun, and did not expect to become a writer.

Three weeks after receiving her Masters in Western Canadian History in 1980, she approached a group of veteran coal miners who had their story to tell. Her first book, Boss Whistle, resulted from this oral history . The Coal Miners of Vancouver Island Remember (1982), which was the story of the Dunsmuir family's coal mines on Vancouver Island and their workers. The core of the book was a 130 hour interview with Myrtle Bergren. Nanaimo's Coal Tyee Society acted as sponsor .

After the book won Eaton's BC Book Award in 1982 , Bown delved deeper and wrote a sequel, Three Dollar Dreams (1987), to better understand the sometimes violent history of the coal mines' labor movement on south Vancouver Island from 1848 to 1900 to be able to represent. Three Dollar Dreams was in 1988 on the short list of Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize and won the Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Writing British Columbia History.

This work led to a history of the entire family dynasty, The Dunsmuirs of Nanaimo (1989) and a biography of the legendary coal baron Robert Dunsmuir , Robert Dunsmuir: Laird of the Mines (1999), which has the theme for two plays Rod Langley gave . Already in 1993 she had with Muddling Through, The Remarkable Story of the Barr Colonists , in which she, as the granddaughter of Isaac Montgomery Barr (1847-1937), examined her own family pioneer history and that of the 200 British settlers who in 1903 the charismatic preacher in the remote areas south Saskatoon followed that to the BC Book Prizes belonging Hubert Evans non-Fiction Prize can win.

In her latest book, Whoever Gives Us Bread: The Story of Italians in British Columbia (2011), Lynne Bowen portrayed the history and importance of Italian immigrants in British Columbia, during which she also undertook research trips to Italy . In the process, she also revealed the story of around 50 Italians who were put in an internment camp on Vancouver Island during World War II because the government officials were afraid of a fifth column in the service of Benito Mussolini .

After six books so far, many magazine articles for columnists as well as a daily newspaper column and radio broadcast for CKEG (1981), Bowen continues to write historical non-fiction books. She was also vice-chair of the Rogers Communications Chair in Creative Non-Fiction Writing at the University of British Columbia from 1992 to 2006.

She also worked as an expert and screenwriter on the production of historical video portraits of British Columbia ( Nanaimo Heritage Video , 1989; Harbor City , 1996) and was a substitute lecturer in history at Malaspina College in Nanaimo between 1987 and 1990. Some of her books have also been recorded as audiobooks for schools, and various interviews found their way into the archives as documentation CDs.

plant

Non-fiction
  • Friendly societies in Nanaimo: the British tradition of self-help in a Canadian coal mining community. Thesis (MA), University of Victoria 1980.
  • Boss whistle. The Coal Miners of Vancouver Island Remember . Oolichan Books, Lantzville 1982, ISBN 0-88982-041-4 .
    • Revised new edition: Rocky Point Books and Nanaimo District Museum, Nanaimo 2002.
  • Three dollar dreams. Oolichan Books, Lantzville 1987, ISBN 0-88982-065-1 .
  • The Dunsmuirs of Nanaimo . The Nanaimo Festival, Nanaimo 1989
  • Muddling Through. The Remarkable Story of the Barr Colonists. Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver 1992, ISBN 1-55054-053-X .
  • Those Lake People. Stories of Cowichan Lake. Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver 1995, ISBN 1-55054-464-0 .
  • Robert Dunsmuir. Laird of the Mines. XYZ Publishing, Montreal 1999, ISBN 0-9683601-3-0 .
  • Whoever Gives Us Bread. The Story of Italians in British Columbia. Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver 2011, ISBN 978-1-55365-608-1 .
Lexical articles
  • Barr Colony. In: Oxford Reference Online / Gerald Hallowell: The Oxford Companion to Canadian History. Oxford 2004.
  • James Robert Dansmuir. In: Oxford Reference Online / Gerald Hallowell: The Oxford Companion to Canadian History. Oxford 2004.
Documentaries
  • Nanaimo Heritage Video. 1989.
  • Stanley Burke, Rod Langley, Lynne Bowen: One hundred years below. Imagemedia Services, Richmond, BC 1992. 23 min.
  • Harbor City. 1996.
Audio books
  • Interview with Bill Rice-Wyse. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1979, CD, 55 min.
  • Interview with Joseph White. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1983, CD, 45 min.
  • Interview with George Edwards about the Wellington mines. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1983, CD, 58 min.
  • Interview with Barbara Freeman Stannard. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1983, CD, 60 min.
  • Conversation with William Cottle and Nelson Dean while visiting the mine sites of Wellington. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1984, CD, 43 min.
  • Interview with William Cottle, Nelson Dean, Jock Gilmour and Jack Atkinson. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1984, 2 CD, 85 min.
  • Interview with Marie Conti, Dorothy Graham, and John Marocch. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1984, CD, 60 min.
  • Interview with Olive Storey Spencer. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1984, CD, 60 min.
  • Interview with Vera Cornish Riddell. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1984, CD, 42 min.
  • Interview with Lillian Dixon. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1985, CD, 43 min.
  • Conversation with George Edwards and Joseph White while visiting the mine sites of Wellington. Coal Tyee Society, Nanaimo, BC 1985, CD, 58 min.
  • Muddling Through. The Remarkable Story of the Barr Colonists. Speaker: Robert Adams. 7 audio cassettes, 525 min., LSB, Vancouver, BC 1995.
  • Those Lake People. Stories of Cowichan Lake. Speaker: Barbara Karmazyn, 9 audio cassettes, 580 min., LSB, Vancouver, BC 2002.

Exhibitions

  • Lynne Bowen, "The Italians of Store and Johnson Streets." A Friends of the BC Archives presentation. Royal BC Museum. Opening April 22, 2012.

Awards and nominations

review

Robert Dunsmuir. Laird of the Mines
  • "Having written two successful books on the coal mining culture of Vancouver Island, Lynne Bowen has written a concise, readable life of King Grab, suitable for young adults and useful to anyone seeking a handy research tool. She provides a chronology, aligning Dunsmuir's life with the major events of his time in Canada and around the world, and a bibliography of her sources and related works. "
  • "The reader gains important insights into the lives and circumstances of the workers of the period, the aboriginal population, and of the various immigrant groups particularly the Chinese whose fate was very much shaped by Dunsmuir and his ilk. The book provides at once a fascinating piece of social history, and the basis for an enhanced appreciation of contemporary Canadian society. "
Whoever Gives us Bread: The Story of Italians in British Columbia
  • "Bowen's enthusiasm for her subjects is unmistakable and of great benefit to the reader. Her prose is supported by eighteen years of travel and research that took her the length of the Italian peninsula to the agrotowns that her subjects departed, the cities and outposts of British Columbia where they worked and settled, and the various archives that documented their presence. She uncovers valuable information from a staggering number of sources, including monographs, obscure or out-of-print books, genealogical records, commemorative booklets, payroll and inventory lists, and oral testimonies both old and recent. (...) On a more critical note, the story-telling format struggles when a chapter's contents are loosely festooned into a common theme. (...) These comments aside, Whoever Gives us Bread is a well-sourced, timely, and highly readable book. It colors the familiar and lesser-traveled places of British Columbia with the imprint of Italian experiences ”.

reception

Indirectly, parts of their book Boss Whistle served as the basis for the staging of the play We too by Jeremy Long and Phil Savath, which tried to bring industrial history to the stage. The revised version of the play premiered on March 4, 2011 at Vancouver Island University . It had previously been shown at Malaspina College.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lynne Bowen's member profile on the Writer's Union of Canada website . Retrieved July 11, 2012.
  2. ↑ Short biography on www.lynnebowen.ca . Retrieved July 11, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Author's portrait and review summary of Lynne Bowen . On: www.abcbookworld.com. Retrieved July 11, 2012.
  4. ↑ Background: Whistler Family Sketches. Destination: Western Canada . Retrieved July 11, 2012.
  5. ↑ Short portrait of Lynne Bowen. On: www.gobc.ca. Retrieved July 11, 2012.
  6. ↑ Dianne Newell: Review Boss Whistle: The Coal Miners of Vancouver Island Remember. In: The British Columbian Quartely BC Studies . No. 85, summer 1983, p. 77.
  7. ^ Wallace Clement: Review Three Dollar Dreams by Lynne Bowen. In: The British Columbian Quartely BC Studies , No. 81, Spring 1989, pp. 86-88.
  8. ^ Lynne Bowen, "The Italians of Store and Johnson Streets." A Friends of the BC Archives presentation. Royal BC Museum. Opening April 22nd, 2012 ( memento of December 30th, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved July 11, 2012.
  9. ^ Natalie Samson: City of Vancouver Book Award reveals shortlist. On: Quill & Quire . September 2011. Retrieved July 11, 2012.
  10. ↑ Alexander D. Gregor: Review Robert Dunsmuir: Laird of the Mines. In: CM Magazine . University of Manitoba , Volume VI. Number 14, March 17, 2000. Retrieved July 11, 2012.
  11. ↑ Stephen A. Fielding: Whoever Gives us Bread: The Story of Italians in British Columbia by Lynne Bowen. In: BC Studies. No. 173 Spring 2012. Archived from the original on January 17, 2013 ; accessed on March 13, 2020 .
  12. ^ History on Stage: Transforming history into relevant, entertaining musical theater. On: The VIU News. February 28, 2011. Retrieved July 11, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Bowen, Lynne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian historian, author and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Indian Head , Saskatchewan