Intimate Strangers: The Letters of Margaret Laurence and Gabrielle Roy

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

In 1976, a wonderful correspondence came into being when Margaret
Laurence took up her pen to write a letter of admiration and gratitude
to Gabrielle Roy. Both writers came from Manitoba, and their common
landscape created a similar artistic sensibility—perhaps even a sense
of kinship, despite the fact that they had never met. In that first
note, Laurence thanked Roy for creating Rose-Anna in The Tin Flute, a
character who had been a source of strength for Laurence in difficult
times. “Although the circumstances of my life and Rose-Anna’s could
hardly be more different, I have always felt I knew that woman awfully
well. There is a part of her in me.”

Indeed. As the communication between Laurence and Roy began to grow,
the two women were pleased to discover great resonance. They shared a
passion for writing, a strong identification with the environment, and a
vision of Canada that encompassed English, French, and Aboriginal
peoples. On this last point, their correspondence is particularly
fascinating. The Manitoba of their childhoods separated the English and
French into strongly ethnocentric communities, yet both Laurence and Roy
managed to rise above this prejudice. During the tumultuous politics of
the 1970s, such divisive attitudes became the norm across the country,
and both writers feared what this outlook could do to Canada.

Paul Socken, a professor of French at the University of Waterloo, has
prepared an enlightening introduction that further details the similar
lives of the two writers. Moreover, his notes have clarified any vague
bits in the communication quite nicely.

This epistolary collection will be indispensable to any scholar of
20th-century Canadian literature.