Helen Creighton

Edith Fowke is professor emeritus at York University and author of
Canadian Folklore: Perspectives on Canadian Culture.

This slight, well-illustrated volume gives a good account of the life
and work of Nova Scotia’s foremost folk-song/folklore collector.
Because it is designed for young people, it emphasizes Creighton’s
early life in Dartmouth, describing her brothers and sisters, their
family Christmas, her schooldays and school friends, and her summer
camp.

World War I ended her carefree childhood. She lived through the great
Halifax explosion and volunteered to drive an ambulance. After the war,
she visited her brother Mac, a doctor, in Mexico, and taught in a school
there for a short time. Back in Dartmouth, Creighton started writing
children’s stories and broadcasting on the local radio station as
“Aunt Helen.” With her first introduction to Roy Mackenzie’s book
of Nova Scotia songs, her lifetime career was launched. She collected
thousands of songs, along with many tales, games, and superstitions,
publishing them in a series of books. Perhaps the best known of these is
Bluenose Ghost, which contains many fascinating stories told by the
local people.

The book goes on to describe some of the singers (and Creighton’s
relations with them) and its subject’s growing fame. The main fault of
this account is the writing, which is rather pedestrian, with too much
repetition and too many passive sentences.