Renowned poet, author, and academic Elizabeth Brewster (1922-2012) had a long, illustrious, and well-travelled career, the roots of which were formed in New Brunswick and at UNB.
Betty Brewster was born in the small logging community of Chipman, N.B., the youngest of five children. She was literary from a young age; her first published poem appeared in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal when she was 12 years old.
Brewster arrived at UNB in 1942 on an entrance scholarship. A shy student, she found a close circle of fellow writers in Fredericton and in 1945 was among the founders of The Fiddlehead, Canada’s longest-running literary magazine. Her one-time professor Desmond Pacey later wrote of her, “there was always behind her timid exterior a character of great strength and toughness, and she was far from defenceless,” adding, “she is a woman of extremely complex sensibility, and of a high degree of self-discipline.”
Self-discipline is certainly evident in Brewster’s academic record. After graduating from UNB with a bachelor of arts, first class honours in 1946, she went on to complete an M.A. at Harvard’s Radcliffe College, a bachelor of library science at the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in English at Indiana University.
In 1949, she was awarded a Lord Beaverbrook Postgraduate Overseas Scholarship to study for a year at King’s College London. The Lord Beaverbrook Postgraduate Overseas Scholarship was intended not only for university study, but to allow the recipient to gain life experience through travel, experience Lord Beaverbrook valued highly. Brewster’s year in London went on to inform her poetry throughout her life.
Brewster was one of an elite few women Canadian poets who were published in the 1940s and 1950s, and her accomplishments helped pave the way for generations of poets to come. Her first book of poetry, East Coast, was published in 1951, and over the next six decades she published more than two dozen books of poetry, prose, and memoir. Her final book of poetry, Time and Seasons, was published in 2009 when she was 87 years old.
Early in her career, she worked as a librarian in New Brunswick, Alberta, Indiana and Ontario, and taught English and creative writing at several universities across Canada. In 1972, she joined the faculty of English at the University of Saskatchewan, and there she stayed until 1990.
The impact of Brewster’s work was widely recognized. Along with numerous literary prizes and awards throughout her student years, she received the Saskatchewan Book Award, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal, a Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and, in 1982, an honorary doctorate from UNB. Two of her poetry collections were shortlisted for Governor General’s Awards, and in 2001 she was appointed to the Order of Canada.
Elizabeth Brewster died in 2012 at the age of 90.
The following poem, “Where I Come From,” appeared in Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada, published by Goose Lane Editions in 2002.
Where I Come From
Elizabeth Brewster
People are made of places. They carry with them
hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace
or the cool eyes of sea gazers. Atmosphere of cities
how different drops from them, like the smell of smog
or the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring,
nature tidily plotted with a guidebook;
or the smell of work, glue factories maybe,
chromium-plated offices; smell of subways
crowded at rush hours.
Where I come from, people
carry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods;
blueberry patches in the burned-out bush;
wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint,
with yards where hens and chickens circle about,
clucking aimlessly; battered schoolhouses
behind which violets grow. Spring and winter
are the mind's chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice.
A door in the mind blows open, and there blows
a frosty wind from fields of snow.
John Bliss, 1950 Beaverbrook Entrance Scholar, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering in 1955. John had a long and successful engineering career until his retirement in 1998 as City Engineer for Fredericton. In 2008, the E. John Bliss Water Treatment Plant was named in his honour.
Ray W. Dixon, Q.C. was a 1955 Beaverbrook Entrance Scholar who went on to complete three degrees at UNB: a BA in 1960, BEd in 1961, and a Bachelor of Common Law in 1965.
Pauline Lordon (BSA 1985) grew up, like Lord Beaverbrook, in Miramichi. She came to UNB Fredericton not only as a Beaverbrook scholar but as a highly sought-after basketball player, and to say she thrived is an understatement. During her time playing for UNB she earned accolades such as UNB Female Athlete of the Year, Eric Garland Award for All Round Athlete of the Year, and CIS All Canadian. She was team captain and MVP for four years running, honing leadership skills she has continued to apply throughout her life both on and off the court.