Evah McKowan explained

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

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.

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]

Notes and 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.
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.
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.
6. Evah McKowan, Graydon of the Windermere (George H. Doran Company 1920).
7. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/13058874/evah_mckowan_1921/ "Evah McKowan"
8. Lyn Harrington, Syllables of Recorded Time: The Story of the Canadian Authors Association (Dundurn 1981): 51.
9. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/13059247/e_mckowan_addresses_canadian_authors/ "Steam Roller Inauguration of Confederation Omitted from Canadian Histories"
10. D. M. Wilson, "Lumbering in Cranbrook" The Virtual Crow's Nest Highway (February 16, 2016).
11. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZTkzAAAAMAAJ&dq=Evah+May+McKowan&pg=PA240 "Eva May McKowan"
12. News: Kootenay Pioneer Dies, 74 . . Cranbrook, British Columbia . 26 . 1962-02-24 . 2020-07-14 . Newspapers.com.