Evah McKowan

Evah May McKowan (February 6, 1885 – February 22, 1962) was a Canadian writer.

Evah McKowan, from a 1922 publication

Early life

Evah May Cartwright was born at Carlisle, Ontario, the daughter of George Cartwright and Clara Cartwright. As a teen she moved west with her parents and three younger sisters, and lived much of her adulthood in Cranbrook, British Columbia.[1] She remembered skiing with her students when she was a teacher in 1903. Cartwright said that she and her sister were the first girls in the area of Kimberley, British Columbia to ski.[2]

Career

McKowan published two novels. Janet of Kootenay (1919)[3] is about a young single woman who buys and runs a farm named "Arcadia" in British Columbia, told in a series of letters to her friend back east.[4] Janet Kirk, the title character, eventually marries a disabled veteran of World War I, making the book a "surprisingly progressive" and timely romance in its day.[5] McKowan's second book, Graydon of the Windermere (1920)[6] is a "bright breezy story of adventure and love",[7] about a Toronto man who moves west.[1]

She served on the British Columbia provincial committee of the Canadian Authors Association,[8] and addressed the association's annual convention in 1937.[9] She took over as president of her husband's business, Cranbrook Sash and Door, upon his death in 1947. She sold the business in 1956.[10]

Personal life

Evah Cartwright married lumberman Harry A. McKowan in 1907; they had four daughters.[11] She was widowed in 1947, and died in Cranbrook on February 22, 1962.[12]

References
  1. Mike Selby, "Cranbrook's Evah McKowan: 'Janet of Kootenay'" Cranbrook Daily Townsman (November 28, 2014).
  2. Chic Scott, Powder Pioneers: Ski Stories from the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains (Rocky Mountain Books 2005): 114. ISBN 9781894765640
  3. Evah McKowan, Janet of Kootenay: Life, Love and Laughter in an Arcady of the West (George H. Doran Company 1919).
  4. Florian Freitag, The Farm Novel in North America: Genre and Nation in the United States, English Canada, and French Canada, 1845-1945 (Boydell and Brewer 2013): 154-155. ISBN 9781571135377
  5. Amy Tector, "'Mother, Lover, Nurse': The Reassertion of Conventional Gender Norms in Fictional Representations of Disability in Canadian Novels of the First World War" in Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw, eds., A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the First World War (UBC Press 2012): 308-310.ISBN 9780774822596
  6. Evah McKowan, Graydon of the Windermere (George H. Doran Company 1920).
  7. "Evah McKowan" Winnipeg Tribune (November 19, 1921): 39. via Newspapers.comopen access
  8. Lyn Harrington, Syllables of Recorded Time: The Story of the Canadian Authors Association (Dundurn 1981): 51. ISBN 9781459713628
  9. "Steam Roller Inauguration of Confederation Omitted from Canadian Histories" Winnipeg Tribune (June 29, 1937): 2. via Newspapers.comopen access
  10. D. M. Wilson, "Lumbering in Cranbrook" The Virtual Crow's Nest Highway (February 16, 2016).
  11. "Eva May McKowan" in Charles Whately Parker, Barnet M. Greene, eds., Who's Who in Canada (1922): 240.
  12. "Kootenay Pioneer Dies, 74". Calgary Herald. Cranbrook, British Columbia. February 24, 1962. p. 26. Retrieved July 14, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
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