Letters of Annoyance

December 15, 1999

Paul Tough, Editor
Saturday Night
184 Front St. East
Ste 400
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 4N3

Dear Mr. Tough,

We would like to point out a rather annoying omission in Jane Farrow's piece entitled Diary Rock in your 'Millennium Issue'. In her list of female writers who "transformed Canadian literature," Farrow fails to mention Emily Chesley - a speculative fiction writer who published a formidable body of work at the turn of the last century while residing in London, Ontario.

Like Susanna Moodie, Catharine Parr Traill and Pauline Johnson, the unheralded Emily Chesley also "tended towards introspection," had a "propensity for journal writing," and certainly felt the sting of being "chronically rejected by snooty Upper Canadian publishers." And, like her peers, Chesley's creativity was fueled, at least in part, by her harsh experiences of "survival on the Canadian frontier" and the cruelties inflicted by "inattentive lovers and traitorous white men" (in Chesley's case, hirsute cavalry men of Norwegian descent).

It is our view - nay, our duty to illuminate the fact - that Chesley's contribution to science fiction and the feminist movement in Canada has been too long overlooked by literary historians and the media. More can be learned about Chesley's remarkable life and works at http://emilychesley.com

 

Sincerely,

Mac Ruddock
For the Emily Chesley Reading Circle