Gabrielle Roy: A Passion for Writing

Success and fame as a novelist came to Gabrielle Roy in cir-cumstances that resemble a fairy tale. Born in St Boniface, Manitoba in 1909, she was the adored youngest child in a family of eleven children. She was beautiful, intelligent, and appealing, and everyone she met seemed to fall under her spell. Luck had it that Gabrielle crossed paths with several extraordinary people. Her friend Henri Girard helped her to become a successful journalist in Montreal and was an invaluable literary adviser when she wrote The Tin Flute in the mid-1940s. Her lawyer, Jean-Marie Nadeau, turned her into an international star. Thanks to his efforts, more than 700,000 copies of The Tin Flute were sold in the United States, and the film rights were bought for $75,000, a fortune in those days. The Tin Flute received unanimous praise in both French and English editions. Gabrielle Roy won the Prix Femina in France and the Governor General’s Award in Canada. But she paid dearly for those heady days of glory. She continued to write and publish for thirty-two years before achieving another huge literary success with the publication of Children of My Heart . During these difficult years, she had to deal with family members who often reproached her and a husband who caused her worry and distress. Her fame became a torment to her. Through it all, Gabrielle Roy hung on to her vocation as a writer. Her tenacity and dedication to her work seems all the more remarkable when we consider that she died before knowing of the enormous success of the first volume of her autobiography, Enchantment and Sorrow . Gabrielle Roy was an admirable woman who gave everything to her wri-ting, including a portion of her happiness.