Arnold Edinborough: An Autobiography

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright and librettist and author of the
children’s books Magic and What’s in a Name?

Edinborough came to Canada in 1947 to teach English at Queen’s
University. Born on a farm in England and educated at Cambridge, blessed
with a love of theatre and literature, he embraced the opportunities
that Canada offered and was soon directing Canadian drama and
encouraging Canadian poetry among his students. He even had the temerity
to start a new Canadian poetry magazine with George Whalley.

He went on to become editor of the Kingston Whig-Standard and later of
Saturday Night, and many other things as well. He spent 15 years as a
Canadian Club speaker around the country, spoke and wrote copiously for
the CBC, wrote a culture column for The Financial Post, and was the
first president of the Council for Business and the Arts (which was set
up in 1974 to get business and the arts talking to one another).

Edinborough kept a diary over the years and gives us a very readable
account of his life as an immigrant to this country and as a family man
trying to balance his love of the arts with a judicious eye on his bank
account. Because he has become a national figure, readers might wish for
a more encompassing view of where we are at the end of the century. But
he sticks to his personal story and in the process delivers an
interesting look at the uneasy relationship between business and the
arts in any country.