Best Canadianfictionwriters Podcasts (2024)

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers: 2010- the Present 25:44

6y ago25:44

25:44

This is the final podcast in my series Canada's Greatest Storytellers 1867 to today. But this look at the past decade from 2010 to today is full of interesting authors and questions. Drew Hayden Taylor's book Funny You Don't Look Like One:Observations from a Blue Eyed Ojibway makes it clear that determining who is an Indigenous writer in Canada is …

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers: 2000-2010 29:09

6y ago29:09

29:09

Alistair MacLeod's long awaited first novel, No Great Mischief, drew me to his Windsor home to grab his manuscript in what he called "a home invasion". It went on to win the IMPAC Award and gain a headline in the local paper in Eigg, Scotland which the MacLeod's left in 1790 to sail for Cape Breton, "EIGG MAN WINS PRIZE". Alan Fry's brave 1970 book…

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers: 1990-2000 22:21

6y ago22:21

22:21

Sadly. this decade marked a time when in Canadian Fiction the Old Guard was dying off. Margaret Laurence died in 1987 and the 1990's saw us lose people named Callaghan, Mitchell and Davies. But names from a new diverse Canada were emerging, like Sri Lanka's Michael Ondaatje, or Mumbai's Rohinton Mistry (or even Chicago's Carol Shields, our first Ca…

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers: 1980-1990 26:05

6y ago26:05

26:05

These were years of steady progress in Canadian writing, with major names like Davies, Laurence, Mitchell, Callaghan and MacLennan still writing, and new authors emerging. The most prominent was Margaret Atwood, who was to establish a huge international presence. Leonard Cohen remained a larger than life character. Yves Beauchemin's Le Matou ( The …

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers: 1970 -1980 22:46

6y ago22:46

22:46

The 1972 hockey showdown with Russia was a central moment for all Canadians, including the great hockey fan Mordecai Richler, who returned to Montreal after his apprenticeship in England. In French his equivalent was Anne Hebert, a Quebecoise exile in Paris for many years. Unlike Mavis Gallant, she found that living in Paris did not harm her Canadi…

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers: 1960-1970 25:17

6y ago25:17

25:17

The Sixties were years of turmoil. In the U.S.A. Martin Luther King fought for Civil Rights for Blacks and reminded Canadians of their proud role in the Underground Railroad. Canada continued to force residential schools on Indigenous families. Manitoba's Margaret Laurence emerged as English Canada's most popular novelist. In Quebec the arts scene …

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers: 1950 -1960s 24:02

6y ago24:02

24:02

The 1950's were when Canada prospered, with new TV sets and washing machines filling houses in new suburbs, as immigrants continued to arrive. This was the decade when Glenn Gould's recording of Bach was sent into space, and Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize. At home, John Diefenbaker rose to power, and I acquired a behind-the-scenes story a…

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers: 1940 -1950 25:13

6y ago25:13

25:13

In 1939 Hitler put an end to Canada's Depression when money not available for starving Canadians on relief suddenly became available to buy war supplies. Canada's P.M., Mackenzie King was brilliantly satirised by Frank Scott in the poem W.M.L.K., while Gabrielle Roy's novel, The Tim Flute transformed Quebec writing by taking it into a grimy Montrea…

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Canada"s Greatest Storytellers 1930-1940 16:06

6y ago16:06

16:06

The Depression from 1929 to 1939, hit Canada very hard, and we got a good sense of its impact in Barry Broadfoot's oral history, Ten Lost Years, which I edited. I also edited later novels by Morley Callaghan, whose 1937 book, More Joy in Heaven is the great Canadian English book about these hard times. In French, the harsh novel, Trente Arpents/Thi…

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers,1920 - 1930 19:47

6y ago19:47

19:47

The Roaring Twenties saw the rise of the Group of Seven and Canadian Art, while Stephen Leacock became the world's most popular humourist, dividing his life between Orilla, Ontario, and the very Scottish McGill University in Montreal. Meanwhile a truly terrible novel set in Canada, involving a French hero boiling and eating his moccasins, won the P…

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers, 1910-1920 21:50

6y ago21:50

21:50

The First World War cost Canada over 60,000 dead and changed the country. Hugh MacLennan's first novel Barometer Rising (1942) dealt with the Halifax explosion of 1917. His later book Two Solitudes described the conscription crisis in Quebec. The great novels of the decade were by Charles Gordon/Ralph Connor and sold in the millions. In French, the…

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers, 1900-1910 21:00

6y ago21:00

21:00

Emile Nelligan is arguably Quebec's most talented and tragic poet. Lucy Maud Montgomery is the author of Canada's most perennially popular novel, Anne of Green Gables, which has brought millions of tourists to Prince Edward Island.By Douglas Gibson

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers 1890-1900 19:48

6y ago19:48

19:48

This decade includes the Indigenous writer Pauline Johnson and her Brantford schoolmate, Sarah Jeanette Duncan. Duncan was the first woman to write for the Globe and to become a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery before creating the Canadian classic novel,The Imperialist.By Douglas Gibson

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Canada's Greatest Storytellers, 1880-1890 15:01

6y ago15:01

15:01

The decade of The Last Spike deals with Felicite Anger, who wrote as Laure Conan, the first great Quebecoise story teller, and a look at Louis Riel projects us forward to Margaret Laurence and her treatment of the Metis in The Diviners.By Douglas Gibson