Hugh MacLennan

John Hugh MacLennan, CC , CQ (20 March 1907 - 9 November 1990) was a Canadian author and professor of English at McGill University. He won five Governor General's Awards and a Royal Bank Award. MacLennan was born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia and moved with his family to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1914. He was educated at Dalhousie University, Oxford University, and Princeton University before accepting a teaching position at Lower Canada College in Montreal, Quebec. He married Dorothy Duncan in 1936.

MacLennan wrote two unpublished novels before "Barometer Rising" (1941), his novel about the social class structure of Nova Scotia and the Halifax Explosion of 1917. His most famous novel, "Two Solitudes", a literary allegory for the tensions between English and French Canada, followed in 1945. That year, he left Lower Canada College. "Two Solitudes" won MacLennan his first Governor General's Award for Fiction.

In 1948, MacLennan published "The Precipice", which again won the Governor General's Award. The following year, he published a collection of essays, "Cross Country", which won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction.

In 1951, MacLennan returned to teaching, accepting a position at McGill University. In 1954, he published another essay collection, "Thirty and Three", which again won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction.

One of MacLennan's students at McGill was Marian Engel, who became a noted Canadian novelist in the 1970s.

Duncan died in 1957. MacLennan married his second wife, Aline Walker, in 1959. That same year, he published "The Watch That Ends the Night", which won his final Governor General's Award.

In 1967, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 1985 he was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec.

MacLennan continued to write and publish work, with his final novel "Voices in Time" appearing in 1980. He died in North Hatley, Quebec.

The Canadian band The Tragically Hip, on their album "Fully Completely", have a song called "'Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)". A passage from "The Watch That Ends the Night" is adapted for use in the song.

Bibliography

Novels

*"Barometer Rising" (1941)
*"Two Solitudes" (1945)
*"The Precipice" (1948)
*"Each Man's Son" (1951)
*"The Watch That Ends the Night" (1957)
*"Return of the Sphinx" (1967)
*"Voices in Time" (1980)

Non-fiction

*"Oxyrhyncus : an Economic and Social Study" (1935)
*"Canadian Unity and Quebec" (1942)
*"Cross Country" (1949)
*"The Future of the Novel as an Art Form" (1959)
*"Scotchman's Return and other essays" (1960)
*"Seven Rivers of Canada" (1961)
*"The Colour of Canada" (1967)
*"The Other Side of Hugh MacLennan" (1978)
*"On Being a Maritime Writer" (1984)
*"Dear Marian, Dear Hugh:The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence" (1995; ed. Christl Verduyn)

Works about MacLennan

*Cameron, Elspeth. "Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life" (1981)
*Goetsch, Paul. "Das Romanwerk Hugh MacLennans : eine Studie zum literarischen Nationalismus in Kanada" (1961)
*Hoy, Hellen. "Hugh MacLennan and His Works" (1990)
*Peepre-Bordessa, Mari. "Hugh MacLennan's National Trilogy: Mapping a Canadian Identity (1940–1950)" (1990)
*Coleman, Anne. "I'll Tell You a Secret-A Memory of Seven Summers". (2004).
*The Tragically Hip. "Courage". (1992).

External links

* [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0004983 Hugh MacLennan's] entry in [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=HomePage&Params=A1 The Canadian Encyclopedia]
* [http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/maclennan/bio.htm MacLennan project at McGill University]
* [http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/index.html Map of Halifax as it existed in 1915 available in the archives--useful for reading MacLennan's "Barometer Rising"]
* [http://www.gg.ca/honours/search-recherche/honours-desc.asp?lang=e&TypeID=orc&id=1068 Order of Canada Citation]