Margaret Laurence: A Gift of Grace—a Spiritual Biography

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

This small book packs a surprising amount of information and thoughtful
reflection on one of Canada’s truly great writers. “Spiritual
biography” is an apt description because of Laurence’s strong
Protestant roots, deeply imprinted as she grew up in Neepawa, Manitoba,
during World War II, and intensified further by her commitment to the
anti-nuclear movement in the 1980s. Noelle Boughton “discovered”
Laurence during a Canadian literature course at the University of
Manitoba (Laurence’s own alma mater) in 1975: “No one had laid bare
our story like that before, and no writer ever rivalled her impact on
me.” In Laurence’s novel The Diviners, Boughton rediscovered her own
roots.

In 1946, Laurence met Jack Laurence, 10 years her senior. He had served
in India during World War II and was studying civil engineering at the
University of Manitoba. The two were married in the Neepawa United
Church in September 1947. Both considered marriage a commitment for
life. They settled in Winnipeg’s North End, where Laurence met budding
author Adele Wiseman, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants. By then,
Laurence was working for two Winnipeg newspapers. Her marriage took her
to London, England, then to Africa. Life there was far from easy, but it
led to her two books on Africa, A Tree for Poverty and The Prophet’s
Camel Bell, and many published articles. Laurence later said that it was
Africa “that really taught her to look at herself.”

Jack’s job took them to Vancouver, where Margaret was unhappy but
found a kindred spirit in novelist Ethel Wilson. When Jack’s work took
him to East Pakistan, Margaret and their children moved to England,
where she would eventually write six books. Curiously, her life in
England reinforced her Canadian roots. Her spirituality was also
deepening. She left for Canada in July 1973, bought an old brick house
in Lakefield, Ontario, and received an honorary degree from Trent
University. Shortly afterwards, two fundamentalist parents objected to
The Diviners being taught in Lakefield’s Grade 13. A devastated
Margaret turned to writing children’s books. Meanwhile, she was
suffering from diabetes, arthritis, and cancer. She died in 1987 and was
buried in Neepawa.

Noelle Boughton’s research is thorough and extensive. This fine book
deserves a place in every Canadian library.