| Main entry | Henderson, Christine Lighthall |
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| Birth place | Ormstown, Quebec |
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| Birth date | 18 January 1868 |
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| Death place | Montreal, Quebec |
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| Death date | 16 December 1968 |
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| Identifier | 0006 |
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| Birth name | Christine Margaret Lighthall |
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| Married name | Henderson |
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| Marital status | married |
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| Religious affiliation | Methodist; United Church of Canada |
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| Paid work | teacher (school) |
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| Biography | Born into a prominent Anglophone German family in Quebec, Christine Margaret Lighthall (1868-1968) could not speak a word of French until she was ten, yet she later became an informal ambassador between the two cultures in Canada. After language study at the Feller Institute, Grande Ligne, Quebec, she returned as a teacher of French to her girlhood school, the Huntingdon Academy. Although her talent as teacher was noted by a school inspector who encouraged her to advance to a more prestigious institution, Lighthall traded ambition for love and settled into sixteen years of marriage with a Huntingdon carpenter, Francis Harold Henderson (1851-1908). A cousin of the prominent man of letters, W.D. Lighthall, Christine only began to write poetry after becoming widowed and after she had begun the years of extensive travel and study that filled the rest of her long life. She took special courses at McGill and Harvard, crossed the Atlantic ten times, spent a year visiting friends in Europe, and studied Italian in Rome. She was a foreign correspondent for the French-language journal, L'AURORE, in 1925, and established a reputation as a lecturer on European culture and on the protection of birds. Her first substantial collection of poems, SHIP'S WAKE AND ROAD'S LURE (1937), issued from the wandering spirit of her later life. Her poetic facility in two languages found an appreciative audience in both Anglophone and Francophone literary communities. Christine died in December 1968, more than a century after her birth. |
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| Travel | Europe, 1922-23; England, 1935 |
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| Other notes | Studied in L'acadie, Quebec. Taught in Huntingdon before marriage (1891) |
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| Honours and awards | Honourable Mention for "Rhapsody to an Ailing City Tree,” Best Poem Award, Montreal Poetry Contest (Canadian Authors Association, 1929); Award for "Peace on Earth 1934," Poetry prize (Montreal Women's Club, 1934); Lyric Poem Award (Polish Institute of Arts, Montreal, 1948) |
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| Residences | Ormstown, Quebec (1868-); St. Malachie, Quebec (1871); L'acadie, Quebec (1881); Huntingdon, Quebec (1891, 1901); Montreal, Quebec (1923, 1935) |
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| Geographic regions | Quebec |
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| Primary genres | poetry |
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| Books | THE UNWELCOME GUEST, AND OTHER POEMS (c1931); THE BLUE JAY'S MESSAGE, AND OTHER POEMS (1934); SHIP'S WAKE AND ROAD'S LURE (1937); THOUGHTFUL PETIE'S ADVENTURES, AND OTHER POEMS (1939); OUR VOLUNTEERS, AND OTHER POEMS (1940); ENGLAND REMEMBERED (1944) |
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| Periodicals | L'AURORE; MONTREAL POETRY YEAR BOOK (1929, 1930, 1931, 1934, 1937); POETRY REVIEW |
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| Other publications | Anthologized in: Canadian Authors Association, MONTREAL IN VERSE (1942) |
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| Organizations | Canadian Authors Association, Poetry Society (England), Society of Canadian Literature |
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| Father's name | Stephen Montgomery Lighthall |
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| Life dates of father | May 1834, Quebec - 5 October 1908, United States (New York or Massachusetts) |
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| Father's note | "gentleman"; "conducteur du camion" |
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| Mother's name | Susan McPherson |
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| Life dates of mother | September 1838, Quebec - 25 December 1914, West Medford, Massachusetts |
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| Spouse 1 | Francis Harold Henderson |
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| Life dates of spouse 1 | 10 July 1851, Huntingdon, Quebec - 22 April 1908, Huntingdon, Quebec |
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| Spouse 1 note | carpenter at Huntingdon Academy |
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| Marriage 1 date | 22 September 1892 |
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| Marriage 1 place | Rouses Point, Clinton, New York, USA |
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| Biographical references | Canadian Newspaper Service, NATIONAL REFERENCE BOOK (1940); 1871 Census of Canada; 1881 Census of Canada; 1891 Census of Canada; 1901 Census of Canada; Canada, Ocean Arrivals (Form 30A), 1919-1924; Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 90, 224 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | photographs and miscellaneous papers, Lighthall Family papers, McGill University; correspondence, Canadian Writers' Foundation Papers, National Archives of Canada |
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| Image credits | Image from H. Harrison, ed. NATIONAL REFERENCE BOOK ON CANADIAN MEN AND WOMEN, 6th ed. (Montreal, QC: Canadian Newspaper Service, 1940. |
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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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