It was not until her children were grown that she decided to try to publish. (Her first manuscript, Kimberley of Millpond, has been published 55 years later in 2010 by her daughter.) Her stories were written in longhand because Bernice didn't own a typewriter. When her own children were small, Bernice wrote for them an ongoing story about their lives in Millbrook, Ontario with themselves as heroines. She continued to write because writing was as natural to her as breathing. The fateful words stayed buried in her heart for many years. Montgomery could not know was that Bernice came from a very poor background and had no hope of a University Education. Montgomery said, 'A writer must have higher education - it is imperative that you go to University.' The young hopeful went away dejected. The famous author of Anne Of Green Gables complimented Bernice: 'Your characters ring true!.You have a good imagination' – blissful words for the young author's ears, but the next bit of advice was a crushing blow to the fourteen-year-old's already faltering self-esteem. In her teens, she met and had the temerity to present a story to her idol, L.M. She was interested in writing since early childhood and would often have a captive audience of school chums lined up along the curb to listen to her stories. Her books accurately depict these locales in different eras. In 1956, she and her husband bought their own home on Meldazy Drive in a beautiful new subdivision in Scarborough, when McCowan was a gravel road and north of Ellesmere was farmland. Her husband was transferred to Peterborough, so they moved to Millbrook when her children were young. As a new bride, she lived on Gladstone Avenue in Toronto. She attended Runnymede Collegiate, but didn't graduate because the war started and she went to work (depicted in The Girls They Left Behind). The 'new house' was on Cornell Avenue and she went to Birchcliff Public School, but most of her childhood and teens were spent on Lavinia, which is why Swansea claims her for their own. (Despite the hardships of poverty, it was her nature to be happy, so the books are upbeat.) They lived in Birchcliff and Swansea. The Booky Trilogy, set during the Great Depression, depicts her family being forced to stay ahead of the bailiff, who threw them out when her unemployed father couldn't afford the rent. She struggled in school because they moved so often. No Greats.īernice was the middle child of 5 children (Wilma, Gordon, Bernice, Jack and Robert). She married her high school sweetheart, Lloyd Hunter, and had two children, Anita and Heather, and four grandchildren, Meredith, Lisa, Hunter and Franceline. She was born in Toronto, Ontario, on Novemand died May 29, 2002.

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