Sheila Martin Watson (24 October 1909 – 1 February 1998) was a Canadian novelist, critic and teacher. She "is best known for her modernist novel, The Double Hook."

Life

She was born Sheila Martin Doherty at New Westminster, British Columbia. She grew up on the grounds of the provincial mental hospital where her father, Dr. Charles Edward Doherty, was the superintendent until his death in 1922.

After studying at Vancouver's Convent of the Sacred Heart, Sheila Doherty finished her university studies at the University of British Columbia, where she received her B.A. in 1931 and M.A. in 1933. She then worked as an elementary and high school teacher throughout British Columbia – including two years in Dog Creek (1935–1937), which served as a basis for her second novel, Deep Hollow Creek. She married Canadian poet Wilfred Watson in 1941. She was unable to find a publisher. "T.S. Eliot at Faber & Faber, Cecil Day-Lewis at Chatto & Windus, and Rupert Hart-Davis all turned it down."

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation approached Watson to option the film rights to The Double Hook. However, because they would not give her veto rights over the script, she turned them down. Watson remained the founding editor of the White Pelican for its brief existence (1971–1975). Watson retired in 1975. In 1976, she and her husband moved to Nanaimo, where they died in 1998. a setting of the story of Creon and Antigone in the wilds of British Columbia.

Recognition

Watson was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1984.

A biography, Always Someone to Kill the Doves: A Life of Sheila Watson by F.T. Flahiff was published in 2005.

The University of St. Michael's College held a two-day event, "Celebrating Sheila," on October 24 and 25, 2009, to mark the 100th anniversary of Watson's birth and the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Double Hook.

  • Five Stories. Toronto: Coach House P, 1984.
  • A Father's Kingdom: The Complete Short Fiction. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, New Canadian Library, 2004.

Essays

  • "A Question of Portraiture." The Tamarack Review (Autumn 1963).
  • "The Great War: Wyndham Lewis and the Underground Press." arts/canada (Winter 1965).
  • "Canada and Wyndham Lewis the Artist." Canadian Literature (Winter 1968).
  • "Artist Ape as Crowd-master." in Explorations Ed. Marshall McLuhan, sup. The Varsity Graduate (May 1964).
  • "Myth and Counter-myth." White Pelican (Winter 1974).
  • "Swift and Ovid: The Development of Metasatire." The Humanities Association Bulletin (Spring 1967).
  • "Power: Nude or Naked." in Explorations Ed. Marshall McLuhan, sup. The Varsity Graduate (December 1965).
  • "Michael Ondaatje: The Mechanization of Death." White Pelican (Fall 1972).
  • "Gertrude Stein: The Style is the Machine." White Pelican (Autumn 1973).
  • "What I'm Going to Do." Open Letter 3.1 (1975).
  • "How to Read Ulysses," Sheila Watson: Essays on Her Works (2015).

Edited

  • Habits and Hangups (Study Guide for Modern Consciousness course). Edmonton: Athabasca University, 1979. Written and edited with Mary Hamilton.
  • The Collected Poems of Miriam Mandel. Edmonton: Longspoon Press, 1984.

Fonds

Watson named her friend, English professor Dr. Fred T. Flahiff, as her literary executor and sent him her archives between 1994 and 1998. When Watson died in 1998, Flahiff also donated books from her personal library to the University of St. Michael's College. The archives of Sheila Watson are currently preserved at the University of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto.