Table Of ContentPraise for Sisters in the Wilderness
National Bestseller
Winner of the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award 2000 for the Non-
Fiction Book of the Year Winner of the 1999 Floyd S. Chalmers Award in
Ontario History Shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Award A Globe 100 Book of
1999
“Everyone knows the stories of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, but not until this double
biography has so much been revealed about the sisters who founded a literary tradition in Canada.”
—Ottawa Citizen
“Richly detailed and wonderfully written … Gray [exhibits] an uncommon ability to tell a compelling story
… evocative … superb …”
—The London Free Press
“Sisters in the Wilderness is a masterly biography.… [A] particularly moving … portrait of pioneer life: the
raw landscape, the endless journeys, the hazards of travel, the terrors of lonely settlements.”
—Calgary Herald/Ottawa Citizen “A captivating double biography.”
—Financial Times
“Simply one of the most delightful books you’ll ever read. What’s more, you don’t have to be a Canadian to
enjoy it.”
—The Canada Post
“A fine and astringent book … what distinguishes this book is—a most enviable quality in any biography—
a superb trustworthiness. That trust is born out of intelligence and sympathy alike.”
—Times Literary Supplement
“Charlotte Gray’s exciting new biography, the beautifully-illustrated Sisters in the Wilderness, brings these
women to life beyond their books.”
—The Hamilton Spectator
“A major contribution … Gray is equally forthcoming with detail about life in the bush and towns of 19th
century Canada…. I was thoroughly engrossed…. Sisters is a keeper that will be useful in many ways for a
long time to come.”
—Toronto Star
“Many delights [in] this superb biography.”
—Quill & Quire, starred review “In Charlotte Gray’s wonderful new biography, [the sisters] are brought to
life as two remarkable women whose close relationship never faltered throughout their long and often
challenging lives…. Gray draws a compelling and insightful picture of these two very different women and
the time in which they lived…. With meticulous research and an immensely readable style, Gray chronicles
the sisters’ never-ending struggles and their eventual rise to literary fame…”
—National Post
“Gray has produced a fascinating examination of two of this country’s seminal woods-and-prairies writers
… [an] entertaining and honest picture of two plucky gentlewomen’s thrashings in the bush.”
—Edmonton Journal
“Hats off to Gray for providing a vehicle that allows us to see these literary revolutionaries in a new,
remarkably humanistic light.”
—The Calgary Straight
“Vivid…. Gray peels away the hoary stereotypes to reveal the tumultuous lives of two sisters whose prolific
writings added immensely to cultural life in the young colony. Sisters in the Wilderness is a meticulously
researched historical account graced with the narrative drive, elegant prose and complex characters of an
accomplished novel…. Gray’s biography is a winning remedy for the oversights of history.”
—Maclean’s
“Gray’s fascinating biography … offers us an old-fashioned adventure story for girls, a tribute to the moxie
of two remarkable women.… Gray memorably contrasts [their] ordeals …”
—Telegraph-Journal (Saint John, NB) “Gray has done a commendable job presenting two most interesting
lives.”
—The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo) “Charlotte Gray is a superb storyteller and that is what this country
desperately needs now that our history has been so shamefully ignored by our educational system.”
—Pierre Berton
PENGUIN CANADA
SISTERS IN THE WILDERNESS
CHARLOTTE GRAY is one of Canada’s best known writers and biographers, and the award-winning
author of several bestsellers, including Reluctant Genius: The Passions and Inventions of Alexander
Graham Bell and Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King. An adjunct research professor in
the department of history at Carleton University, Gray sits on the boards of both the Dominion Institute and
the Canadian National History Society. She and her husband live in Ottawa.
PENGUIN CANADA
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a
division of Pearson Canada Inc.) Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York
10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green,
Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road,
Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India
Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67
Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin
Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin
Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in Viking Canada
hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1999
Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc.,
2000
Published in this edition, 2008
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)
Copyright © Charlotte Gray, 1999
Author representation: Westwood Creative Artists
94 Harbord Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1G6
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission
of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Manufactured in Canada.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Gray, Charlotte, 1948–
Sisters in the wilderness : the lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill / Charlotte Gray.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-14-316836-2
1. Moodie, Susanna, 1803–1885. 2. Traill, Catherine Parr, 1802–1899. 3. Frontier and pioneer life—
Ontario. 4. Women authors, Canadian (English)—19th century—Biography. 5. Women authors, Canadian
(English)—Ontario—Biography. I. Title.
FC3067.2.G729 2008
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca
Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-
800-810-3104, ext. 477 or 474
This book is for my parents, Robert and Elizabeth Gray, with love.
It is also in affectionate memory of my father-in-law
Dr. Reginald Anderson (1910–1998).
Contents
Preface
Prelude: February 1834
Chapter 1: New Beginnings
Chapter 2: “The Scribbling Fever”
Chapter 3: Sweet Dreams
Chapter 4: Flapping Sails
Chapter 5: Land of Stumps
Chapter 6: “Yankee Savages”
Chapter 7: “Halcyon Days in the Bush”
Chapter 8: “A Little Red-Haired Baboon”
Chapter 9: A Call to Arms
Chapter 10: Belligerent Belleville
Chapter 11: Barefoot Crusoes
Chapter 12: The Secrets of the Prison House
Chapter 13: Mortification and Madness
Chapter 14: Good Advice
Chapter 15: Rap, Rap, Who’s There?
Chapter 16: Tottering Slowly On
Chapter 17: “A Wail for the Forest”
Chapter 18: A Trip to Stony Lake
Chapter 19: Apotheosis in Ottawa
Chapter 20: The Oldest Living Author in Her Majesty’s Dominion
