| Main entry | Barrett, Ena Constance |
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| Birth place | Leicestershire, England |
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| Birth date | 20 January 1893 |
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| Death place | Grand Falls, Newfoundland |
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| Death date | 21 January 1967 |
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| Identifier | 0158 |
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| Birth name | Ena Constance Culbard |
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| Married name | Barrett |
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| Marital status | married |
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| Religious affiliation | United |
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| Biography | As a young child, Ena Constance Culbard (1893-1967) endured much tragedy and transition. Some records list her birthplace as England, and others as Scotland, a discrepancy due to the nature of how Ena came to live with the Culbard family. After the untimely death of their young mother, Norah (McQuie), Ena and her brother (who later became distinguished biochemist Sir Jack Drummond) lived with different sets of aunts and uncles. Ena lived briefly with Norah's sister and husband, Constance (McQuie) and Arthur Culbard until their deaths in 1902 and 1903 respectively. She then moved to Dunkeld, Scotland under the care of Arthur's newly-widowed mother, Mrs. Jessy Stewart Dingwall Fordyce (Mathews) Culbard. Ena remained with her adoptive grandmother until the latter died in 1919, just a year before Ena married John Archelaus Barrett (1872-1955), a soldier with the Newfoundland Forestry Unit. The couple later lost their first son, John Hamilton Barrett, in the sinking of the "Caribou" during the second World War. Despite these misfortunes, Ena received a good education and had a flourishing and vibrant writing career. During her time with the Culbards, Ena received private tutoring, and during summer vacations in the Lake District she mixed with prominent artistic and literary figures, including Beatrix Potter. Her first poem, "The Little White Road of Life," appeared in 1913. In 1915, Ena published her first collection of verse with the Rosemount Press in Scotland, RAINBOW THOUGHTS. During her lifetime she wrote over three hundred poems, many of which were collected in her three volumes of verse. Settled in Newfoundland with her husband and family, Ena expressed her enthusiasm for her new home in dozens of poems in newspapers and periodicals, earning the sobriquet, "Newfoundland's Poet Laureate." She fulfilled this role by writing poems to mark official events such as Confederation and the Newfoundland tours of Queen Elizabeth. Widowed in 1955, she spent her final years in the land that had become her home. |
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| Other notes | The Dingwall-Fordyces were a legendary family in Aberdeenshire, and lived in Brucklay Castle for some time; Ena's adoptive father was a descendant of the family through his mother. Having inherited a great deal of money from the Culbards, Ena was able to import all her fine furnishings and library to Newfoundland, including several books from Brucklay.
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| Residences | Leicestershire, England (1893-1901); Ainsdale, Lancashire, England (1901); Dunkeld, Perthshire, Scotland (1901-1920); Curling, Newfoundland (1920-1967) |
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| Geographic regions | Newfoundland |
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| Primary genres | poetry |
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| Books | RAINBOW THOUGHTS (1915); ON THE OLD DROVE ROAD (1917); RAINBOW LYRICS (1921); LILTS OF NEWFOUNDLAND (1929); MAYFLOWERS AND ROSES: A BOUQUET OF VERSE (1946) |
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| Periodicals | NEWFOUNDLAND QUARTERLY |
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| Father's name | Arthur Dingwall Fordyce Culbard |
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| Life dates of father | 25 June 1855, Turiff, Aberdeenshire, Scotland - April 1903, Toxteth Park, Lancashire, England; m. 1881 |
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| Father's note | Adoptive father; East India Merchant; Spice and Seed Merchants business under the firm Culbard and Johnson (dissolved 1882, with Culbard assuming debts) |
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| Mother's name | Constance Gertrude McQuie |
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| Life dates of mother | c1858, Liverpool, England - 1902, Ormskirk, England; m. 1881 |
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| Mother's note | Adoptive mother; sister of Ena's birth mother, Norah (McQuie) |
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| Spouse 1 | John Archelaus Barrett |
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| Life dates of spouse 1 | 10 February 1872, Freshwater, Newfoundland - 10 July 1955, Curling, Newfoundland |
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| Spouse 1 note | publisher; journalist (d 1955) |
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| Marriage 1 date | 17 June 1920 |
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| Marriage 1 place | Cathedral Church of St. Columba, Dunkeld, Perthshire, Scotland |
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| Children number | 4 |
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| Children's names and dates | John Hamilton (1922-1942);
Arthur William Fordyce (1924 - ), m. to Barbara Micklethwaite;
David Gordon (1930 - ), m. to Louise;
Rose Ena (1935 - ), m. to Charles Gillam |
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| Biographical references | ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR; 1901 England Census; special thanks to Helena M. MacLean and Arthur W. F. Barrett for contributing family content and information |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 13 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | Digital copies of early editions of LILTS OF NEWFOUNDLAND and MAYFLOWERS AND ROSES and poems in THE NEWFOUNDLAND QUARTERLY, in Digital Archives Initiative, Memorial University |
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| Image credits | Image courtesy of Rose Gillam, Ena Constance Barrett's daughter. |
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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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