In Canada she became something far more important--a recorder and a namer. Like her sister, Susanna Moodie (author of
Roughing It in the Bush, 1852, and
Life in The Clearings, 1853), who was more romantic and emotional by temperament, Traill left a body of writing that has proven an important resource to students of the history, social conditions, culture, early botanical descriptions, and literature of Upper Canada (now Ontario).
Born to Thomas and Elizabeth Homer Strickland in Kent, England, on 9 January 1802, Catharine saw her life alter dramatically in the spring of 1832 when she married Lt. Thomas Traill, a widowed, retired military officer. Within a week they immigrated to Canada, settling in the rugged bush country north of Peterborough (Ontario). Before that point her life had been tied to rural Suffolk and the quiet, cultivated domesticity of the Strickland family at Reydon Hall. It was to Suffolk that her parents took their five daughters (Susanna and two sons were later born there) when Thomas Strickland retired from a lucrative docks-management position in London. First at Stowe House (1804-1808) and thereafter at Reydon Hall, Strickland sought to implement his forward-looking scheme of educating his daughters in subject matter then thought appropriate only for boys--geography, mathematics, and so on.
This is a free page. This page contains 193 words. This
biography contains 2,347 words (approx. 8 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Catharine Parr Traill Access Pass.
