Roy, Gabrielle (1909–1983)

French-Canadian writer. Born on March 22, 1909, in St. Boniface, Manitoba; died of heart failure on July 13, 1983; youngest of 11 children of Léon Roy and Mélina Roy; sister of Bernadette "Dédette" Roy; attended Winnipeg Normal Institute; married Marcel Carbotte (a physician), in 1945.

Selected works:

Bonheur d'occasion (1945, published in English as The Tin Flute, 1947); La Petite Poule d'Eau (1950, published in English as Where Nests the Water Hen, 1951); Rue Deschambault (1955, published in English as Street of Riches, 1956); La Montagne Secrète (1961, published in English as The Secret Mountain, 1962); Ces Enfants de ma vie (1977, published in English as Children of My Heart ); (autobiography) La Détresse et l'enchantment (1984, published in English as Enchantment and Sorrow, 1987); Letters to Bernadette (1990).

Born the youngest of 11 children in St. Boniface, Manitoba, in 1909, Gabrielle Roy was four years old when her father lost his longtime job and the family, never well-to-do, faced dire financial straits. The effects of poverty would later play a large role in Roy's writings. Gabrielle, who was close to her mother Mélina Roy , helped as best she could by studying hard enough to win cash prizes for her schoolwork; the money she was awarded was sufficient to pay for most of her freshman year at college. After graduating from the Winnipeg Normal Institute, she spent seven years as a teacher, much of it in her hometown of St. Boniface.

In 1937, much to her mother's dismay, Roy gave up her secure teaching job in the midst of the Depression and traveled to Europe. There she published for the first time, with several articles appearing in a French magazine. Imminent war forced her return to Canada in 1939. Settling in Montreal, she supported herself by working as a freelance journalist and began writing what would become her first novel, Bonheur d'occasion (1945). The first close examination of postwar life in Montreal, it was a realistic study of the defeated derelicts of a modern, industrialized city, and marked the beginning of a new era in French-Canadian literature. In 1947, Bonheur d'occasion won the French Prix Fémina, and an English translation published that year, The Tin Flute, received Canada's Governor-General's Award.

Roy's next novel, La Petite Poule d'Eau (1950, published in English as Where Nests the Water Hen, 1951), was written partly in France, where she lived for three years in the late 1940s with her new husband. It was followed by Rue Deschambault (1955); the English translation of that novel, Street of Riches, also won the Governor-General's Award, in 1957, as did her final novel, Ces enfants de ma vie ( Children of My Heart), in 1978. A private woman who preferred to keep public appearances to a minimum, Roy maintained a longtime correspondence with her sister Bernadette Roy , a nun, before Bernadette's death in 1970. These letters were published in English in 1990 as Letters to Bernadette. Roy's autobiography, La Détresse et l'enchantment (published in English as Enchantment and Sorrow), appeared in 1984, one year after her death from heart failure.

sources and suggested reading:

Roy, Gabrielle. Enchantment and Sorrow: The Autobiography of Gabrielle Roy. Trans. by Patricia Claxton. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, c. 1987.

——. Letters to Bernadette. Trans. by Patricia Claxton. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, c. 1990.