Biography: Elsie Park Gowan

Pioneer Played an Important Role in Western Canada Theatre

by: Edward Keen, National Post

Elsie Park Gowan, a groundbreaking playwright, actress, author, and teacher, who helped build theatre in the West, and who’s radio plays earned international recognition, has died, aged 94, in Edmonton.

When radio was in its infancy, Mrs. Gowan was writing award-winning dramas and taking acting roles in some of the productions.

“What was her contribution to theatre and writing in the West? Just name it,” says Moira Day, associate professor of drama at the University of Saskatchewan. “She was one of an important group of women pioneers… who helped build the stages on which the professional and educational theatre in Western Canada now performs.”

Born in Scotland, Mrs. Gowan moved to Alberta in 1912 and graduated from Victoria High School in Edmonton after being put ahead two grades.

As a teenager with her teaching certificate, she began teaching at one-room schools throughout the province.

“She had many interesting stories to tell about her teaching days,” says her son, Gary Gowan. “She was posted at a one roomer out in the wilderness of the foothills and told me she carried a .38 pistol in her belt as protection.”

She was a teacher at Lacombe High School for three years before marrying Dr. Edward Hunter Gowan, a physicist and Rhodes scholar.

An honours history student at the University of Alberta, Mrs Gowan began participating in drama productions. Her first plays, written starting in 1932, won three successive Carnegie Awards. In 1934, Mrs. Gowan began writing radio plays broadcast live on the then Alberta government-owned station, CKUA.

With Elizabeth Sterling Haynes, Mrs. Gowan brought live theatre to Edmonton through the Little Theatre and Studio Theatre.

In 1936, she began writing a series of plays dramatizing Canadian history with emphasis on the West. The plays were later broadcast on the full network of CBC.

“She educated people about Alberta and Canada,” Prof. Day says. “She was a good ambassador for us. She certainly was among the first important playwrights in the West.”

Prof. Day describes Mrs. Gowan as a dedicated socialist and feminist who felt the status quo was not helping disadvantaged groups.

“Her radio plays dealt with important issues: day care, immigration, domestic disputes, sympathy toward native issues,” says Prof. Day, who edited a volume of Mrs. Gowan’s writing, The Hungry Spirit.

“That was her self-description, ‘the hungry spirit’,” she says.

A striking-looking woman whose honey blond hair turned a graceful gray, Mrs. Gowan did not suffer fools easily.

“I remember once, people who were seeking to interview her about some of her work expecting a pussy cat but got clawed,” Prof. Day says.

Mrs. Gowan said she was stage struck as a child, putting on plays in neighbourhood garages.

She continued writing thorough the Second World War years, some of her dramas were broadcast overseas by short wave radio.

From 1944-54, she wrote a series of dramas for CBC with titles such as the following:

- The Town Grows Up
- In Search of Citizens
- The people Next Door
- The Altar of the Moon, and
- In Search of Mental Health

She also wrote a weekly serial, The Barlows of Beaver Street, about an average Canadian family that was transmitted by short wave to the United Kingdom and Caribbean. Two of her plays, Canada Comes of Age, and Road to Alaska, were broadcast countrywide in Australia.

Her vault of unpublished writing is prodigious, Gary Gowan says he has two file cabinets of her material, excluding that which is in public archives.

“There’s no telling what we’re going to find there,” he says.

When her husband died in 1958, Mrs. Gowan returned to teaching English and creative writing at high school.

She retired in 1972 but continued teaching creative writing to senior citizen groups.

In addition to numerous civic, provincial, and national awards, Mrs. Gowan was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta in 1982. She is enrolled in the City of Edmonton Hall of Fame in Dramatic Arts.

She taught writing to senior citizens until age 86 when her physical abilities became restricted.

(Reprinted by permission from the National Post, Published, Friday, January 29, 1999)

(Page Revised ~ September 23, 2001)