Canadian author Margaret Laurence has fascinated me ever since the late Professor Laura Groening of Concordia University introduced The Diviners to our class, along with the NFB documentary First Lady of Manawaka, a lifetime ago in the year 2000. Since then I’ve also read The Stone Angel, alongside James King’s biography of Laurence. This morning, I drove 275 km from Ottawa to the village of Lakefield, near Peterborough, to visit the place where Laurence spent the last 13 years of her life, from 1974 to 1987.
She lived at 8 Regent Street and conducted television interviews in her kitchen, which we would today classify as “retro.” She chose Ontario “village life” after living overseas in both Africa and Britain, but she was never too far from Peterborough, where she served as writer-in-residence at Trent University. She didn’t drive a car and relied on the bus when she would travel to Toronto — a city that she referred to as the Vile Metropolis.
Her former home at 8 Regent includes a plaque, as well as a stone angel nestled amongst the flowers on the front lawn. In the nineties, there were efforts to make the home available to the community, especially to Canadian writers and aspiring writers, but it was ultimately sold. Thankfully, the owner keeps the exterior in a very good state.
I walked past the post office on Queen Street where Laurence had a mailbox and would sift through both fan mail, as well as poison pen letters. The village’s main street includes a handful of gift shops, something Laurence thought was part and parcel of village life. One of them, across from the post office, is simply called Stuff. A short walk from her house on Regent stands Lakeview United Church, which Laurence attended once she returned to her Christian/Presbyterian faith tradition in the seventies. She almost never socialized with the congregation, leaving right before the end of the service, but she did support the church financially.
I visited a bookstore called Happenstance Books & Yarn and yes, yarn and other knitting supplies live alongside the books. They must help pay the rent. I purchased Laurence’s Fire Dwellers before visiting a very small volunteer-run museum called Christ Church Community Museum. It’s an Anglican place, a former country church owned by nearby St. John the Baptist, which continues to serve as a worshipping community. An enthusiastic parishioner gave me a tour. They have their usual exhibit on prominent locals through history and this summer a special display on the many forms of death in nineteenth century Canada.
As the afternoon turned into a scorcher, I drove to my hotel in Peterborough. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I had a hotel’s pool and hot tub all to myself for well over an hour — a good way to wrap up the day.
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- What do they sell? Well, they sell stuff. Enough said.
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- An eclectic and peculiar shop — Tragically hipp!
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- Christ Church Community Museum. It’s only open until Labour Day — daily from 1 pm to 4 pm. Admission is free.
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- Happenstance book and knitting store. It’s great that an Ontario village has its own bookstore.
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- 8 Regent Street with a plaque in memory of Margaret Laurence.
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- 8 Regent Street — with a stone angel watching over the flowerbed.