Ma chère petite soeur: Lettres à Bernadette, 1943-1970

by Gabrielle Roy

Entre 1943 et 1970, Gabrielle Roy a entretenu avec sa sœur Bernadette une émouvante correspondance qui permet de mieux comprendre la vie et la personnalité de la grande romancière. Tout au long de sa vie d'écrivain, Gabrielle Roy a entretenu une correspondance très abondante, avec ses amis, avec ses lecteurs, et surtout avec les membres de sa famille. Ce volume rassemble 138 lettres inédites qu'elle a écrites à sa soeur aînée
Prix Athanase-David pour l'ensemble de son œuvre 1970
Prix Femina 1947 (Bonheur d'occasion)
Prix littéraire du Gouverneur général 1977 (Ces enfants de ma vie)
Prix Ludger-Duvernay de la Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste pour l'ensemble de son œuvre 1956

259 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Gabrielle Roy was born in March 1909 in Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, the youngest of eleven children. Her mother and father, then, were relatively old at the time of her birth -- 42 and 59 respectively. Like Christine's father in Rue Deschambault (Street of Riches), Léon Roy worked as a colonisation officer for the Department of Immigration, a position he held between 1897 and 1915. His politically motivated dismissal occurred six months before his retirement, thus leaving Roy with no pension to support his family. The family's financial predicament during Gabrielle's youth precluded any chance of her attending university, despite having earned stellar marks throughout high school which put her as one of the top students in the entire province. In 1927, after graduating from grade twelve, she enrolled at the Winnipeg Normal Institute where she completed her teacher training.

After teaching in the rural communities of Marchand and Cardinal, where she taught for a year, Roy returned to Saint-Boniface. There she accepted a teaching job at the Académie Provencher boy's school, a position she held from 1930-37. During this period, Roy began actively pursuing her interest in acting and joined the Cercle Molière theatre troupe. Her experiences as an actor inspired her to leave her teaching position and travel to Europe to study drama. Spending between 1937 and 1939 in Britain and France, the fluently bilingual Roy studied acting for six months before concluding that she did not desire to pursue a career in the theatre. In the meantime, she had also begun to write articles about Canada for newspapers in Paris and pieces on Europe for newspapers in Manitoba and came to realize that writing could be her vocation.

Over the course of her lengthy and prolific career, Gabrielle Roy received many honours, including three Governor General's Awards (1947, 1957, 1978), the Prix Fémina (1947), the Companion of the Order of Canada (1967), the Medal of the Canada Council (1968), the Prix David (1971), and the Prix Molson (1978).

Reviews

[François Blanchette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incursion dans l’intime de Mme. Roy. Dans le petit cocon, l’espace privilégié qu’elle partageait avec sa sœur. On apprend à connaître l’auteure plus directement et cela nous confirme bien des impressions sur elle comme son ouverture et son acception de l’autre dans toute ses facette si palpable dans romans. On découvre également que sa grande empathie dans ces correspondances n’est pas qu’une façade littéraire, c’est une fondation de sa personne. Gabrielle Roy saisissait et décortiquait les aléas des relations avec un tact chirurgical stupéfiant. Bien que cette lecture peut sembler poussiéreuse à certains moments à une époque où la communication est instantanée, mais au demeurant, trop souvent en surface, c’est un beau complément à un bibliographie déjà généreuse.