Fonds - Sheila Watson fonds

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Sheila Watson fonds

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    Statement of scale (cartographic)

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    Issuing jurisdiction and denomination (philatelic)

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    Date(s)

    • 1880-1998, predominant 1933-1998 (Creation)
      Creator
      Watson, Sheila, 1909-1998

    Physical description area

    Physical description

    8.4 m of textual records 1138 photographs : col. & b&w ; 21.5 x 28 cm and smaller 4 microfilm 2 audio cassettes 1 sound reel : 1.5 mm

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    Name of creator

    (1909-1998)

    Biographical history

    Sheila Martin Watson (nee Doherty) was an author, teacher and professor of English, living between 1909 and 1998. Born in New Westminster, British Columbia on October 25 1909, Sheila was the second child of Dr. Charles Edward Doherty and Mary Ida Elwena Martin. Sheila attended St. Ann's Academy in Victoria, B.C. for her elementary and secondary schooling and attended the University of British Columbia, earning a B.A. Honours in English in 1931 and her Academic Teaching Certificate in 1932. In 1933 she received her M.A. in English, her thesis concerning Addison and Steele, editors of the eighteenth-century periodical "The Spectator." Watson would go on to teach in Dog Creek (1934-1935) in Cariboo Country and Langley Prairie High School (1936-1940) in the Fraser Valley and in Duncan on Vancouver Island from 1940-1941, where she met and married the poet and dramatist Wilfred Watson.

    Marrying December 29, 1941, Sheila remained in Mission City, in the Fraser Valley, where she taught from September 1941 to the spring of 1945. Wilfred remained in Vancouver, completing his undergraduate degree in 1943. Following World War II, the couple settled in Toronto, where Wilfred pursued his M.A. in English at the University of Toronto, while Sheila taught at Moulton Ladies College (1946-1949). The Watsons remained in Toronto from 1945-1948/49. From 1949-1951, Sheila taught at the University of British Columbia, and for the academic year of 1951/52 she taught at a public high school in Powell River, BC. Watson lived with her husband in Calgary from 1952-54, after which they briefly separated but then spent a year in Paris on a Royal Society of Canada fellowship between 1955-1956.

    Sheila returned to Toronto from September 1956 to August 1961 to pursue her Doctorate of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, supervised by Marshall McLuhan. Her thesis was titled "Wyndham Lewis and Expressionism." Sheila went on to teach at the University of Alberta as a Professor of English, teaching from 1961 to her retirement in August, 1975. From the early 1970s, Watson was a member of several juries of The Canada Council for arts grants and the Governor General's Awards for poetry and fiction. She and her husband moved to Nanaimo, B.C. in 1980, where she continued to advise former students and aspiring writers, and occasionally giving public readings of her work. She died Sunday, February 1, 1998. Watson is best known for her novel "The Double Hook", published in 1959, her series of short stories based around the character of Oedipus and her novel "Deep Hollow Creek", which was written in the 1930s but was not published until 1992, when it was nominated for a Governor General's Award for best new fiction. Watson was also co-founder of the literary journal "White Pelican."

    Custodial history

    Sheila Watson identified her friend Dr. Fred T. Flahiff as her literary executor and sent her archives to him between 1994 and 1998. Following her death in 1998, Flahiff donated the bulk of the Watsons' library to the John M. Kelly Library in 1998. The whole of the archival fonds was donated to the John M. Kelly Library Special Collections in 2006.

    Scope and content

    Fonds consists of the manuscripts, journals, correspondence, teaching and student materials of the author and professor of English, Sheila Watson. Also consists of collections of correspondence purchased and preserved by Watson for the purpose of her doctoral thesis and personal interest in Wyndham Lewis. The fonds also includes a sous-fonds of material related to Watson's role as editor of the literary arts journal White Pelican (1971-1974).

    The White Pelican editorial material sous-fonds series consists of :
    I. Editorial Records
    II. Financial Records
    III. Design and printing records
    IV. Correspondence

    Sheila Watson fonds series consist of :
    I. Diaries, reading journals and day planners
    II. Manuscripts and drafts
    III. General correspondence
    IV. Publishing records and business correspondence
    V. Professional activities materials
    VI. Student material
    VII. Teaching material
    VIII. Research and reference materials
    IX. Financial and legal records
    X. Personal photographs
    XI. Personal records, artwork and artifacts
    XII. Ephemera

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        Restrictions on access

        Access is restricted to some series.

        Terms governing use, reproduction, and publication

        Researchers are required to sign a Researcher Agreement form acknowledging their responsibilities in terms of Canadian copyright legislation. To publish some material, researchers are required to seek permission from the literary executor of the Watson estate.

        Finding aids

        Print finding aid available on site.

        Associated materials

        Additional materials related to Sheila Watson can be found in the Wilfred Watson fonds held at the University of Alberta Archives. Related fonds containing correspondence from Sheila Watson include the Fred T. Flahiff fonds and the Shirley Neuman fonds.

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        Accruals

        No further accruals are expected.

        General note

        The organization of the Watson fonds is an artificial creation by the archivist, as Watson did not appear to have any logical or consistent system of organizing or preserving her archives.

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