Isobel gunn biography examples

  • Isobel Gunn was a young woman from Orkney who, in 1806, disguised herself as a man and signed on to work for the Hudson's Bay Company.
  • The article focuses on the eponymous protagonist of Isobel Gunn, a Canadian feminist historical novel by Audrey Thomas, published in 1999.
  • In 1861, at eighty years of age, she died in Stromness and was buried as Isobel.

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    Isobel Gunn 

    ~ a courageous woman living in a man's world

    In Orkney we've long told the story of a young woman who dared to break convention, pretending to be a man so she could join the Hudson’s Bay Company and find her missing love.

    Isobel Gunn was her name. She has been the subject of books, a documentary, poetry, song and now a play by our friend Áine King.

    But what truth lies behind this story? 

    What's on this page?

    Three different takes on Isobel Gunn's story:

    Áine King tells about her play, Gunn Woman

    Tom Muir gives historical insight

    Morag MacInness offers a poetic retelling of Isobel's story

    Gunn Woman is a new monologue play by Áine King about Isobel Gunn.

    Áine joins us now to tell the story of Orkney's brave Hudson's Bay Company labourer - as far as we know, the only woman in her day to be hired as a Hudson's Bay Company labourer.

    Gunn Woman

    Isobel Gunn was a young woman from Orkney who, in 1806, disguised herself a

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    Author Tags: Fiction Literary Landmarks

    LITERARY LOCATION: Public bench, Spanish Hills government dock, north end of Galiano Island. DIRECTIONS: Take the Sturdies Bay / Porlier resehandling main road up the island for about 26 kilometres, past Lover's Leap and Spotlight Cove, all the way to the aforementioned dock. [Just up the road, about a five-minute walk, there's a cairn marking the 49th parallel.]

    Audrey Thomas has maintained a cottage at the north end of Galiano Island, not far from the former Spanish Hills store, since 1969. "I've spent hundreds of hours sitting on a bench at the government dock, thinking and plotting, and still like to go down there and watch the sunsets. During the Hale-Bopp Comet trajectory, I was down there every night for a month." The dock and former store feature in the opening scene of her novel Intertidal Life for which she received the inaugural Ethel efternamn Fiction Prize, the top fiction award in British Columbia. Thomas is the only writer to have

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    Audrey (Grace) Thomas Biography

    Nationality: Canadian citizen. Born: Audrey Callahan in Binghamton, New York, 1935. Moved to Canada, 1959; lived in Kumasi, Ghana, 1964-66. Education: Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, B.A. 1957; University of British Columbia, Vancouver, M.A. in English 1963. Career: Since 1990 visiting professor, Concordia University, Montreal. Scottish-Canadian Exchange Fellow, Edinburgh, 1985-86; writer-in-residence, University of Victoria, British Columbia, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, and David Thompson University Centre, Nelson, British Columbia. Awards: Atlantic Firsts award, 1965; Canada Council grant, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1974, and Senior Arts grant, 1974, 1977, 1979, 1987, 1991, 1994; Marian Engel award, 1987; Canada-Australia Literary prize, 1990; Ethel Wilson award and BC Book prize, 1985, for Intertidal Life, 1991, for Wild Blue Yonder, and 1995, for Coming Down From

  • isobel gunn biography examples