| Main entry | Dunham, Mabel |
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| Birth place | Minto Township, Wellington, Ontario |
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| Birth date | 29 May 1881 |
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| Death place | Kitchener, Ontario |
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| Death date | 21 June 1957 |
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| Identifier | 0272 |
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| Birth name | Bertha Mabel Dunham |
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| Alternate names | B. Mabel Dunham |
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| Marital status | single |
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| Religious affiliation | United Church of Canada |
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| Degree and date | BA, University of Toronto (1908); DLitt (honorary), University of Western Ontario, 1947 |
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| Paid work | teacher (school); librarian; instructor, library science |
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| Other work | lecturer |
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| Biography | Descendant of United Empire Loyalists on her father's side, Bertha Mabel Dunham (1881-1957) was more interested in her mother's Mennonite lineage. Born on the farm where her father worked near Harriston, Ontario, as a child Mabel Dunham moved to Kitchener (then called Berlin) where she lived for most of her life. She attended the local schools and returned to teach after qualifying at the Toronto Normal School. She subsequently received a BA from the University of Toronto in 1908 and took the library science course offered by McGill. The first trained librarian in Ontario, she took over the Kitchener Public Library where she remained until her retirement in 1944. Her library career was highlighted by her innovation of children's divisions. She became the first lecturer on Library Science when Waterloo College began its program in 1929. Mabel Dunham wrote six books of local history (four of them novels) and won the Book of the Year Medal from the Canadian Association of Children's Librarians for her historical novel for children, KRISTLI'S TREES (1948). Her literary friends included Nellie McClung* and Marshall Saunders*. In 1947, she received an honorary D.Litt from the University of Western Ontario. Mabel died in 1957 and was buried in the First Mennonite Cemetery in Waterloo, Ontario. |
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| Travel | Glasgow (via Montreal), 1924; Quebec (via London), 1924; |
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| Other notes | Dunhams were living in Minto township at time of Mabel's birth; Mabel often listed the nearby Harriston as her hometown. |
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| Honours and awards | Award for KRISTLI'S TREES, Book of the Year Medal (Canadian Association of Children's Librarians, 1948) |
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| Residences | Kitchener, Ontario |
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| Geographic regions | Southern Ontario |
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| Primary genres | fiction; non-fiction (history) |
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| Books | THE TRAIL OF THE CONESTOGA (1924); TOWARD SODOM (1927); THE TRAIL OF THE KING'S MEN (1931); SO GREAT A HERITAGE (1941); GRAND RIVER (1945); KRISTLI'S TREES (1948) |
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| Periodicals | THE MAPLE LEAF; MENNONITE LIFE; ONTARIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY; WATERLOO HISTORICAL SOCIETY |
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| Organizations | Waterloo Historical Society; Ontario Library Association |
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| Father's name | Martin Dunham |
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| Life dates of father | 30 June 1855, East Gwillimbury, Ontario - 3 June 1920, Waterloo, Ontario; m. 1880 |
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| Father's note | farmer; United Empire Loyalist descendent |
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| Mother's name | Magdalena Eby |
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| Life dates of mother | 19 April 1851, Kitchener, Ontario - 7 February 1929, Waterloo, Ontario; m. 1880 |
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| Mother's note | German Mennonite ancestry |
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| Biographical references | Taylor, "Mabel Dunham's Centenary," WATERLOO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 69 (1981): 13-25; FEMINIST COMPANION TO LITERATURE IN ENGLISH (1990); 1891 Census of Canada; 1901 Census of Canada; 1911 Census of Canada; Canada, Ocean Arrivals (Form 30A), 1919-1924; Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1913; UK Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 281, 673, 780 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | correspondence with W.A. Deacon, Deacon Papers, University of Toronto; several letters to Lorne Pierce, Lorne and Edith Pierce collection, Queen's University Archives; ts. of TOWARD SODOM, Macmillan Papers, McMaster University. |
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| Image credits | Image courtesy of Wilfrid Laurier University Archives, U57_71.3. |
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| Copyright | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014. |
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