How fitting to close out the 20th century with a brand new edition of Pearls & Pebbles by the noted chronicler of pioneer life, Catharine Parr Traill. Published in 1894, Pearls & Pebbles is an unusual book with a lasting charm, in which the author’s broad focus ranges from the Canadian natural environment to early settlement of Upper Canada. Through Traill’s eyes, we see the life of the pioneer woman, the disappearance of the forest, and the corresponding changes in the life of the Native Canadians who have inhabited that forest.

Editor Elizabeth Thompson reminds us of the significance of the writings by Traill, the aged author/naturalist, who felt that the hours spent gathering the pebbles and pearls from her notebooks and journals written in the backwoods of Canada was not time wasted.

As one of the first voices to write from the wilds of newly-settled Canada, Catharine Parr Traill’s books continue to be considered important sources of early Canadian history. In particular, The Backwoods of Canada, first published in 1836, details the everyday life of Canada’s founding communities. Together with her sister, Susannah Moodie (who penned the equally historically significant Roughing it in the Bush), Traill became an important resource for settlers arriving in Canada during the nineteenth century. Continuing to write and publish well into her nineties, Catherine Parr Traill is celebrated as one of the first authors in Canadian literary history. She died in 1899 at the age of 97.

Catharine Parr Traill's profile page

Elizabeth Thompson's profile page