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Author profile: Timothy Findley
Timothy Findley (1930-2002)
 Born
in Toronto in 1930, Timothy Findley began his artistic career studying dance and
then later theatre. Findley became quite successful as an actor, even acting alongside
Sir Alec Guinness at the Stratford Festival in the 1950s. In fact, it was not until
he became friends with the actress Ruth Gordon that Findley even considered writing
as a vocation. It was after his first short story was published in The Tamarack
Review, that Gordon was able to convince him that he should give up acting
and concentrate on writing fiction.
Findley's first success as a novelist, however, did not
come in Canada. His first two novels, The Last of the Crazy People (1967)
and The Butterfly Plague
(1969), were rejected by Canadian publishers and were eventually published in
Britain. This all changed, however, with
The Wars (1977). Published to great critical acclaim, Findley's third
novel went on to win the Governor General's Award for fiction and was adapted
for film in 1981. Since then he has published five more novels, each helping
to establish his reputation as one of Canada's most popular and beloved novelists.
Famous Last Words
(1981) became another bestseller for Findley. Set during WorldWar Two, this
complex and thrilling novel of political intrigue has Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
as one of its central characters. 
The fifth novel by Timothy Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage (1986),
remains one of his most popular books ever and is a creative retelling of the
biblical story of Noah and his wife and their journey on the ark. Findley's
next novel, The Telling of Lies, was published in 1989 and went on that
year to win the prestigious Edgar Award for mystery writing. This success was
followed by another bestseller, Headhunter
(1993), a dark and futuristic novel in which the protagonist, Lilah Kemp, accidentally
releases Kurtz from page 92 of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and then must try
to track and recapture Kurtz before he wreaks too much havoc on the city of
Toronto.
Findley's 1995 bestselling novel, The
Piano Man's Daughter (1995), is set in Ontario and spans from the late nineteenth century
to the mid-twentieth century. It is a remarkably moving and memorable family saga that asks
profound questions about the nature of time, family, history, and madness. This
was followed in 1996 by the novella You
Went Away. In the spring of 1997, Findley's two collections of short fiction,
Dinner Along the Amazon
(1984) and Stones (1988) were supplemented by a third, entitled Dust
to Dust.
In 1999, Findley published what is one of his most ambitious and compelling
novels, Pilgrim. The novel tells
the story of a seemingly immortal man winds up in a Swiss psychiatric hospital
in 1915. His doctor is none other than Carl Jung, and he must grapple with the
startling content he finds in his patient's journal. Findley's final novel,
published in 2001, is Spadework. Both a mystery novel and a tribute to the town of Stratford, Ontario, where he and Bill Whitehead have lived for the past several years, Spadework received critical acclaim in Canada and abroad.
Timothy Findley has also written numerous scripts for film
and television and is also the author of a number of plays including Can
You See Me Yet? (1974), The Stillborn Lover (1993).
Elizabeth Rex (2000), his most successful play yet, premiered at the Stratford
Festival to rave reviews. Findley followed this up with the play Shadows
in 2001.
A volume of memoirs entitled Inside
Memory: Pages from a Writer's Workbook was published in 1990. In 1998, he
published From Stone Orchard:
A Collection of Memories, a collection of some of Findley's popular columns
from Harrowsmith Magazine as well as a few new reflections on his feelings about
Stone Orchard and his imminent departure from it.
 Over
the years, Timothy Findley has received many awards and honours, including a
Governor General's Award, the Canadian Authors Association Award, an ACTRA Award
(with his partner William Whitehead), the Order of Ontario, the Ontario Trillium
Award, and he has been appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. Recently
he was honoured by the French Government, who declared him a Chevalier de l'ordre
des arts et des lettres. He has also served as the chairperson of the Writer's
Union of Canada and is a past President of P.E.N. International's Canadian chapter.
Timothy Findley lived most of his adult life with his
partner William Whitehead at a picturesque farm, Stone Orchard, near Cannington,
Ontario. In the mid 1990s, they sold their farm and split their time between
the South of France and Stratford, Ontario. Timothy Findley died in France on June 20, 2002.
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES ABOUT
TIMOTHY FINDLEY AND HIS WORKS.
New To NWP Fiction Non-Fiction Poetry Drama Multimedia Hockey Lit 4-West On Sale
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