Josephine Phelan

Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, I received my education at the Loretto Academy, in Guelph, Ontario, where my father moved when I was four years old. After high school I attended the University of Toronto, continuing as far as an M.A. degree in Canadian History and acquiring a lasting interest in that subject. I have been a school teacher, a publisher's assistant, and am now a librarian in the Toronto Public Library.

After unsuccessful attempts at short story writing, I turned to my first interest, history. I chose as a subject Thomas D'Arcy McGee, a young Irish immigrant, a poet and journalist, who rose to the rank of a minister of the Crown in the Canadian government, but died in 1868 by an assassin's bullet because of his opposition to the Fenians who were raiding the Canadian borders.

This biography, The Ardent Exile (Macmillan of Canada, 1951), won me several awards including the Governor General's medal and the University of British Columbia medal for biography. Looking for other historical themes in the Canadian West, I found the material I was gathering for another biography turning into a boy's story of the days of the fur traders and the buffalo hunts. This story, The Boy Who Ran Away (Macmillan of Canada, 1954), had among its characters a very attractive historical personality, Father Albert Lacombe, the Oblate missionary. He became the subject of my new biography, The Bold Heart (Macmillan of Canada, 1956). I hope that this happy chain reaction will produce more historical subjects to write about.

My interests are books, writing, Canada, and many friends who with all their variety share one or the other of these interests.

I have always lived in Canada, except for a brief residence at the University of Wisconsin. My travelling has been in Canada and the United States, with the result that, to date, my books have travelled more widely than their author; reviews have turned up from as far afield as South Africa.