Gabrielle Roy

Canadian literature changed in 1945. So did the life of Gabrielle Roy. A French Canadian who grew up in poverty in Manitoba, Roy translated that experience and her observations as a Montreal journalist into vivid depictions of urban misery. The 1945 publication of Bonheur d’occasion (later translated as The Tin Flute) launched a new literary genre in Canada — the “urban novel” — and brought fame and prosperity to Roy. Success did not diminish Roy’s drive to write or alter her vision of herself as a permanent outsider.