Purdy, Alfred Wellington

▪ 2001

“Al” 

      Canadian poet (b. Dec. 30, 1918, Wooler, Ont.—d. April 21, 2000, Sidney, B.C.), was one of the leading Canadian poets of the 20th century. Purdy captured the loneliness and quiet grandeur of the Canadian landscape in his work, which included a novel (A Splinter in the Heart [1990]), an autobiography (Reaching for the Beaufort Sea [1993]), nine collections of essays, and more than 30 volumes of poetry. Purdy, a high-school dropout, published his first volume of poetry in 1944 when he was serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force. It was not until the 1960s, however, that he was able to support his family on earnings from his poetry and freelance journalism. Purdy's poems ranged from the mundane to the sublime. He often wrote of his native eastern Ontario, of the members of Canada's working class—farmers, lumberjacks—and of life's frustrations and sorrows. He was a two-time recipient of Canada's highest literary prize, the Governor General's Award for Poetry—first in 1965 for The Cariboo Horses and later, in 1986, for Collected Poems. Purdy's final collection of poems, Beyond Remembering, was published posthumously.

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