Blodwen Davies


Blodwen Davies was a Canadian journalist, historian and travel writer.

Biography

Davies was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1897. Her parents were David Williams Davies, a coal miner and boiler engineer and Edith McQueston. She was educated at a convent in nearby Longueuil. After graduation, she became a journalist and worked for a newspaper in Fort William, Ontario.
In 1921 she moved to Toronto where she became an advocate for the Group of Seven and eventually became the biographer for Tom Thomson. She published A Study of Tom Thomson: The Story of a Man Who Looked for Beauty and for Truth in the Wilderness in 1935. She earned a living as a freelance writer and researcher. Many of her books explored Canada's social history, highlighting the same cities and regions that were also favourites of the Group of Seven. In the late 1930s she moved to New York City where she became involved in Scientific humanism. She co-wrote a book with Oliver Reiser, Planetary Democracy on the subject. In 1946 she moved back to Ontario where she lived on a rural property north of Toronto. She spent the remainder of her life writing travelogues about Canada and studying the lore of the local Mennonite community. She died in Cedar Grove, Ontario in 1966.

Works

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