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Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr 139 Sisters in the Wilderness: Mythologizing Catharine Parr Traill Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr Often called (at least by me) the “grandmothers of Canadian literature,” Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie came from the talented Strickland family of England, six girls and two boys. Six of the eight siblings became published writers, but, of the girls, only Susanna and Catharine braved the emigrant ’s journey to the colony of Canada, following their brother Samuel, to start new lives with their half-pay-officer husbands. The Canadian branch certainly clung tenaciously to the writing gift so prevalent in their family, despite backwoods conditions and roughing it to make a life in the New World. Their literary contributions are now standard fare in CanLit courses. The two sisters have woven their way into the consciousness not only of the many undergraduates who have read either The Backwoods of Canada or Roughing It in the Bush, but also of other Canadian writers—notably Margaret Atwood (The Journals of Susanna Moodie), Margaret Laurence (The Diviners), Robertson Davies (At My Heart’s Core), Carol Shields (Small Ceremonies) and Timothy Findley (Headhunter), providing “a challenge, model, or touchstone for those who conjure them” (Kröller 45). These responses are indicative of the works’ literary impact. ButmostCanadiansnowadaysseemtohavelearnedthebiographicaldetails of the life and writings of Traill and Moodie from Charlotte Gray’s joint biography of them, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill (1999), and the film (of the same title, written, produced and directed by Susan Dando), based on the book, that followed in 2004. Gray’s portrait, while well written and award winning, leaves the general impression that only the foolhardy or hard-core nineteenth-century CanLit fan would bother reading most of their books nowadays. The idea that they are “not for modern readers” is laced into her portrait. How will the legacies of Traill and Moodiebemeasuredinlightofthis? This paper explores some of the aspects of the mythologizing of Traill and Mythologizing Catharine Parr Traill 140 Moodie, with a focus on Traill, which culminated in the Sisters in the Wilderness film. Do we admire Traill and Moodie because they were tough and persevered —in other words, they were literary pioneers simply because they kept writing under harsh conditions—or do we actually admire them for the books they produced? Are Traill and Moodie really “not for modern readers” or has Charlotte Gray done them a complete disservice, enhancing her own literary reputation while diminishing theirs? On her own website, Gray’s promotional copy says this about the book: In Sisters in the Wilderness award-winning author Charlotte Gray breathes new life into the two remarkable characters and brings us a brilliantly clear picture of life in the backwoods and clearings of Upper Canada. Using the women’s correspondence and personal papers as well as their published works, this meticulously researched, beautifully told biography is a thoroughly compelling read and an important addition to Canadian history.1 (emphasis mine) I read Sisters in the Wilderness when it came out, receptive to a biog­ raphy that celebrated one of my favourite writers, Catharine Parr Traill. What I found instead was a biography that concentrated on Traill as a pion­ eer, as a historical figure, as an icon, as an irrepressible optimist and particularly as a sister, but definitely not as a writer. I didn’t find any “new life” breathed into her, nor did I find it “meticulously researched.” The discomfort grew gradually as I read. Hardly any attention was paid to her books and whatever mention there was of them was dismissive and non-specific. The Backwoods of Canada, for example, is described as being “saturate[d]” with “ingenuous optimism” (125) and Canadian Crusoes is labelled “a barely disguised survival manual” (191). How are such backhanded assessments meant to engender the “thrilling intimacy between reader and subject” that Gray herself points to as one of the charms of the genre of biography? (Gray, Sisters 1999). My feelings grew into full-blown resentment with this phrase—“a further volume of Catharine ’s essays, Cot and Cradle Stories …” was published the following year (342, emphasis mine). Cot and Cradle Stories is not a book of essays; it is a book of children’s stories. It was then that I realized that not only did Charlotte Gray not appreciate C. P. T.’s writing, she hadn’t even read it. Even skimming Cot and Cradle Stories (never mind the clear giveaway in...

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