| Main entry | Baird, Irene |
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| Birth place | Carlisle, Cumberland County, England |
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| Birth date | 9 April 1901 |
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| Death place | Victoria, British Columbia |
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| Death date | 19 April 1981 |
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| Identifier | 0462 |
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| Birth name | Irene Violet Elise Todd |
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| Married name | Baird |
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| Marital status | married |
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| Paid work | journalist; publicist (National Film Board); civil servant |
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| Other work | lecturer |
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| Biography | An only child always known to family as "Bonnie," Irene Violet Elise Todd (1901-1981) was born to Robert Todd and Eva Pullar, owners of a woollen mill, in Carlisle, England. Her parents took a keen interest in the education of their only child, who studied first at home with the assistance of a governess, and later at expensive boarding schools. After a fly fishing trip to British Columbia, Robert decided to relocate the family to Qualicum Beach in 1919. In 1923 Irene married Scottish immigrant Robert Patrick Hay Baird (1891-1952) and settled with him in Vancouver, where they had two children. In the early 1930s, Irene was employed as the first female teacher at St. George's Boys' Private School in Vancouver. As a result of the Depression, her husband Robert lost his job as an engineer, and in 1936 or 1937, the family relocated to Victoria, at which point Irene took up writing as a profession. Her first novel, JOHN, was published in 1937. While in Victoria, Irene was inspired by social movements to write WASTE HERITAGE (1939), a novel of social protest based on the occupation of the Vancouver post office by the unemployed in 1938. While her husband went overseas to fight in WWII, Irene went on to write HE RIDES THE SKY (1941), praising the bravery of the men of the RAF and the RCAF. In 1940 and 1941 she gave a series of radio addresses on aspects of the war, some of which were published in the pamphlet THE NORTH AMERICAN TRADITION (1941). That same year she wrote a column for the VANCOUVER SUN, and in 1942 joined the staff of the DAILY PROVINCE. By the end of the war, Robert and Irene had decided to separate (though they never divorced), and before long, Irene accepted a position at the National Film Board. She moved to Ottawa, travelling widely over the next five years as part of her job. After serving as the Canadian representative at the National Film Board in Washington and Mexico City, she returned to Ottawa in 1947 and joined the Federal Department of Mines and Resources and the Department of Northern Affairs. There, she served as senior information officer until 1962, and then as chief of Information Services, becoming the first woman to head a federal information division. Her experiences and travels during this period fuelled the publication of several articles, lectures, and pamphlets dealing with the Canadian North. At the same time, her poetry, stories, and articles were appearing in SATURDAY NIGHT, BEAVER, NORTH, CANADIAN GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, and the UNESCO COURIER. Irene retired in 1967 and moved to London, where she completed her last novel, THE CLIMATE OF POWER (1971). Fluent in French and Spanish, she continued to travel, describing her experiences in a travel column for the OTTAWA JOURNAL. She eventually returned to Victoria in 1973, where she worked on a fifth and unfinished novel until her death in 1981. |
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| Travel | England, 1922; Port Huron, Michigan, 1942 |
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| Residences | Carlisle, England (1901-c1919); Qualicum Beach, British Columbia (1919-); Vancouver, British Columbia (c1923-); Victoria, British Columbia (c1936-); Washington, DC (1943); Mexico City (1943-44); Ottawa, Ontario (c1947-); London, England (c1967-); Victoria (1973-1981) |
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| Geographic regions | England; British Columbia; Ontario |
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| Primary genres | fiction; non-fiction; journalism |
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| Books | CANADA'S NORTH (19--), with others; JOHN (1937); WASTE HERITAGE (1939); HE RIDES THE SKY (1941); THE NORTH AMERICAN TRADITION (1941); THE CLIMATE OF POWER (1971); THE ESKIMOS IN CANADA (1971); CANADA'S NORTH: A LAND ON THE MOVE (c1972) |
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| Periodicals | BEAVER; CANADIAN GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL; LAURENTIAN UNIVERSITY REVIEW; NORTH; NORTHERN AFFAIRS BULLETIN; OTTAWA JOURNAL; SATURDAY NIGHT; TORONTO STAR WEEKLY; UNESCO COURIER |
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| Other publications | Anthologized in: Fairley, SPIRIT OF CANADIAN DEMOCRACY (1945) |
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| Organizations | National Film Board; Federal Department of Mines and Resources; Department of Northern Affairs |
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| Father's name | Robert Todd |
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| Life dates of father | c1863, Scotland - |
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| Father's note | Owned a woollen mill in Carlisle, England; spinner |
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| Mother's name | Eva Emily Pullar |
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| Life dates of mother | 1874, Bexley Heath, Kent, England - |
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| Spouse 1 | Robert Patrick Hay Baird |
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| Life dates of spouse 1 | 1 August 1891, Cults, Aberdeenshire, Scotland - 7 November 1952, Kamloops, British Columbia |
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| Spouse 1 note | engineer |
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| Marriage 1 date | 6 June 1923 |
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| Marriage 1 place | French Creek, Nanaimo, British Columbia |
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| Children number | 2 |
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| Children's names and dates | Robert Hay (1924 - );
Moira June Hay (9 March 1928 - 14 March 2007), m. to David Brander-Smith |
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| Biographical references | DICTIONARY OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY 68; Hill, Colin, "Critical Introduction," WASTE HERITAGE (2007), pp. ix-lvii; British Columbia Marriage Index: 1827 to 1924; Canada Ocean Arrivals (Form 30A), 1919-1924; Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935; England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915; UK Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960; Michigan Passenger and Crew Lists, 1903-1965; Hill, Colin, "Critical Introduction," WASTE HERITAGE (2007), p. ix-lvii; Nora Spence, granddaughter of Irene Baird |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 241; Amicus (National Library of Canada) |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | Manuscripts and correspondence, MacMillan Collection, McMaster University Library; correspondence, Canadian Writers' Foundation fonds; correspondence, Robin Matthews fonds; correspondence, Charles Clay fonds, National Library and Archives of Canada; correspondence, W.A. Deacon Papers, Fisher Library, University of Toronto; correspondence, Paul Reynolds Collection, Columbia University Library; University of British Columbia |
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| Image credits | Image in the public domain. Photo by Karsh, provided by Nora Spence, granddaughter of Irene Baird. |
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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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