| Main entry | Benson, Mary Josephine Trotter |
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| Birth place | Port Hope, Durham, Ontario |
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| Birth date | 20 March 1887 |
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| Death place | Port Hope, Durham, Ontario |
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| Death date | 31 August 1965 |
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| Identifier | 0167 |
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| Birth name | Mary Josephine Trotter |
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| Alternate names | "Erin" |
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| Married name | Benson |
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| Marital status | married |
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| Religious affiliation | Baptist |
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| Paid work | journalist |
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| Other work | doctor's wife |
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| Biography | Daughter of a minister and cousin to the poet, Bernard Freeman Trotter, Mary Josephine Trotter (1887-1965) became a journalist after completing her schooling in her native Port Hope. She eventually moved to Toronto where she wrote advertising copy and edited the magazine supplement of the CANADIAN COURIER from 1912 to 1914, before briefly working for EVERYWOMAN'S MAGAZINE. Friendly with successful writers like Amelia Garvin*, she took part in the cultural life of Toronto until she accepted a marriage proposal from Dr. Harry Wordsworth Benson(1886-1946) in 1915 and returned to Port Hope to be his stay-at-home wife. She remained a popular member in the local women's press club and continued to write articles for newspapers and magazines. Her one volume, a book of poems entitled MY POCKET BERYL (1921) is distinguished by a commitment to her Canadian milieu. Mary died in 1965 and was buried at Union Cemetery in Port Hope. |
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| Travel | England, 1932 |
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| Other notes | Cousin Bernard Freeman Trotter wrote the poetry in A CANADIAN TWILIGHT, AND OTHER POEMS OF WAR AND OF PEACE (1917). In 2002, the library in Port Hope was named after Mary. |
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| Honours and awards | 1st Place ($25) for "The Bitter Lover" and Honourable Mention for “Sister of the Almond,” Short Poem by British Subject Residing in Canada Competition, Montreal Poetry Contest (Canadian Authors Association, 1930) |
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| Residences | Port Hope, Ontario (1887); Pickering, Ontario (1891); St Catherine's, Ontario (1901); Toronto, Ontario (1912-1915); Port Hope, Ontario (1915-1965) |
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| Geographic regions | Southern Ontario |
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| Primary genres | poetry; journalism |
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| Books | MY POCKET BERYL (1921) |
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| Periodicals | CANADIAN COURIER; EVERYWOMAN'S MAGAZINE; MACLEAN'S |
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| Other publications | Anthologized in: Caswell, CANADIAN SINGERS AND THEIR SONGS (1919, 1925); Garvin, CANADIAN POETS (1926); Garvin, CANADIAN VERSE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS (1930) |
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| Organizations | Canadian Women's Press Club, Canadian Authors Association |
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| Father's name | Reverend John Edwin Trotter |
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| Life dates of father | 18 March 1852, Thurlaston, England - 14 June 1907, Port Hope, Ontario; m. 1881 |
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| Father's note | clergyman; clerk |
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| Mother's name | Jane ("Jennie") Morphy |
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| Life dates of mother | 14 May 1854, Ontario - after 1907 |
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| Spouse 1 | Dr. Harry Wordsworth Benson |
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| Life dates of spouse 1 | 29 October 1886, Bewdley, England - 9 January 1946, Port Hope, Ontario |
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| Spouse 1 note | medical doctor |
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| Marriage 1 date | 13 September 1915 |
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| Marriage 1 place | Toronto, Ontario |
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| Biographical references | Lang, WOMEN WHO MADE THE NEWS (1999); 1891 Census of Canada; 1901 Census of Canada; New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957; Ontario, Canada Births, 1869-1911; Ontario, Canada Marriages, 1801-1928 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 16 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | Letter to Amelia Beers Warnock Garvin ("Katherine Hale"), Lorne and Edith Pierce collection, Queen's University Archives |
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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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