Canada's Greatest Storytellers: 1940 -1950

In 1939 Hitler put an end to Canada's Depression when money not available for starving  Canadians on relief suddenly became available to buy war supplies. Canada's P.M., Mackenzie King was brilliantly satirised by Frank Scott in the poem W.M.L.K., while Gabrielle Roy's novel, The Tim Flute transformed Quebec writing by taking it into a grimy Montreal slum. Meanwhile Hugh MacLennan, whom I later edited, gave us all a new term for Canada with his novel Two Solitudes. The decade also saw the rise of two immensely popular novelists, Roger Lemelin (Les Plouffe) in Quebec, and W.O. Mitchell (Who Has Seen The Wind) on the Prairies.