| Main entry | Livesay, Florence Randal |
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| Birth place | Compton, Quebec |
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| Birth date | 3 November 1874 |
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| Death place | Grimsby, Ontario |
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| Death date | 28 July 1953 |
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| Identifier | 0441 |
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| Birth name | Florence Randal |
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| Alternate names | Kilmeny |
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| Married name | Livesay |
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| Marital status | married |
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| Paid work | teacher (school); journalist |
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| Biography | Mother of the poet Dorothy Livesay*, Florence Randal Livesay (1874-1953) was herself a prominent journalist, author, and translator of Ukrainian songs and folklore. Florence Randal was born in Compton, an English-speaking town in Quebec, and attended the Compton Ladies' College (now King's Hall). Her first poem, "Remorse," was published while she was still at school. After the death of her father in 1888, Florence helped to support her family by teaching for a year at the Sequin school in New York. Because she was fluent in French, she was also able to teach Latin and French at Buckingham Public School in Montreal. Her literary career did not truly commence until the late 1890s, when she published stories, poems, and articles in various North American periodicals. She expanded her horizons by traveling as one of forty Canadian teachers sent to South Africa in 1902, to educate Boer children whose families were being held in concentration camps. She returned to Canada in 1903 and moved to Winnipeg, working first as a secretary to Sanford Evans, editor of the TELEGRAM, and assisting on the paper. She transferred to the WINNIPEG FREE PRESS at the end of that year, where she had her own column written under the pseudonym "Kilmeny." She became engaged to John Frederick Bligh Livesay in 1906, a journalist she had known in Ottawa, but they could not afford to marry until 1908, after his appointment as manager of the Western Canadian Press. Florence became editor of the Children's Department at the WINNIPEG FREE PRESS in 1910 while also raising her two daughters and learning more about Ukrainian culture from her household help. She taught herself to read the language but not to speak it, and later produced several translations of Ukrainian songs and folklore. While the family's finances were somewhat unstable due to her husband's inability to budget, the situation improved after he became one of the founders of the Canadian Press in 1917; in 1920 he was appointed general manager and the family moved to Toronto. At this time, they owned a summer cabin next to that of Mazo de la Roche*, and the two women became friends. Other female literary friends included Abby Lyon Sharman*, Valance Patriarche*, and Marshall Saunders*. SHEPHERD'S PURSE, Livesay's first volume of collected verse was published in 1923 and dedicated to poet Duncan Campbell Scott, who was a personal friend. It was followed by SAVOUR OF SALT (1927), a fictional work dealing with the folk culture of Irish immigrants in Ontario. Continuing her work with Ukrainian literature, she continued to publish translations and undertook a lecture tour on the topic in 1931 for the I.O.D.E. (Imperial Order of Daughters of the Empire). A compilation of her Ukrainian material was published posthumously as DOWN SINGING CENTURIES, as was Livesay's manuscript of her husband's autobiography, which she edited after his death in 1944. In 1953 she died unexpectedly in Grimsby, Ontario, from injuries sustained in a bus accident. |
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| Travel | South Africa, 1902-03 |
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| Honours and awards | Honourable Mention for "Challenge at the Four Gates," Lyric Poem Competition, Montreal Poetry Contest, (Canadian Authors Association, 1946) |
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| Residences | Compton, Quebec; Winnipeg (1903-1920); Toronto |
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| Geographic regions | Ontario; Manitoba |
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| Primary genres | poetry; fiction; life-writing |
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| Books | SHEPHERD'S PURSE (1923); SAVOUR OF SALT (1927); |
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| Periodicals | CANADIAN BOOKMAN, CANADIAN FORUM, CANADIAN GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, CANADIAN MAGAZINE, CANADIAN POETRY, CHATELAINE, CONTEMPORARY VERSE, HOUSEKEEPER, MASSEY'S MAGAZINE, MONTREAL POETRY YEAR BOOK (1946); OTTAWA EVENING JOURNAL, OTTAWA JOURNAL, OUTLOOK, POETRY (CHICAGO), SATURDAY NIGHT, TORONTO GLOBE, UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE, WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, WINNIPEG TELEGRAM |
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| Other publications | Anthologized in: Bennett, NEW HARVESTING (1938); Canadian Women's Press Club (Winnipeg), CHRISTMAS KNAPSACK (1914); Carman and Pierce, OUR CANADIAN LITERATURE (1934); Caswell, CANADIAN SINGERS AND THEIR SONGS (1919, 1925); Dickie, THE CANADIAN POETRY BOOK (1922); Garvin, CANADIAN POEMS OF THE GREAT WAR (1918); Garvin, CANADIAN POETS (1916; 1926); Garvin, CANADIAN VERSE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS (1930); Stephen, VOICES OF CANADA (1926); Toronto Women's Press Club, VERSE AND REVERSE (1921, 1922); Translated: SONGS OF UKRAINA, WITH RUTHENIAN POEMS (1916); MARUSIA (1940); DOWN SINGING CENTURIES: FOLK LITERATURE OF THE UKRAINE (1981) |
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| Organizations | Canadian Women's Press Club, Canadian Authors Association |
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| Father's name | Stephen Randal |
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| Father's note | merchant; real estate agent (d 1888) |
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| Mother's name | Mary Louisa Andrews |
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| Spouse 1 | John Frederick Bligh Livesay |
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| Spouse 1 note | Manager of the Western Canadian Press; one of the founders of the Canadian Press (1875-1944) |
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| Marriage 1 date | 3 September 1908 |
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| Marriage 1 place | Winnipeg |
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| Children number | 3 |
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| Children's names and dates | Dorothy (1909-1996); Sophie (b 1912); Arthur Randal (b 1918, lived only 2 days) |
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| Biographical references | Dictionary of Literary Biography 92 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 115, 329 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | correspondence, Florence Randal Livesay Collection, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg; poems and correspondence, Lorne and Edith Pierce collection, Queen's University Archives; correspondence and Diss. on FR Livesay, Dorothy Livesay Papers, University of Manitoba Library; correspondence and unpublished manuscript, Fisher Library, University of Toronto; letters to Robert Weaver and Abby Lyon Sharman, National Archives of Canada; letters to Lionel Haweis, University of British Columbia; letters to J.D. Logan, Acadia University Archives; letters to W.D. Lighthall, McGill University; letters to Elsie Pomeroy and others, Mount Allison University. |
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| Image credits | Image from John. W. Garvin, ed., CANADIAN POETS (2nd ed., Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1926). |
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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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