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Born in Ladysmith on January 1, 1940 to parents Taimi (Aho) and Robert Hindmarch, Gladys Maria Hindmarch began teaching at Vancouver City College in 1965 (later to become Langara College) and started teaching at Capilano College in 1974. She was a rare female presence within the TISH community as well as the Vancouver literary scene in the 1960s and 1970s. As an editor, she was involved in the little magazine Motion (a prose companion to TISH); the second editorial phase of TISH, which she co-edited with Peter Auxier, David Cull, David Dawson, Daphne Marlatt, and Dan McLeod; and issues 7 -- 9 of The Capilano Review.
Her books have had long gestation periods. She began writing her first two books, both published in 1976, back in 1961 (Peter Stories) and 1970 (Birth Account, about two pregnancies but one birth in 1971). Her stories that became The Watery Part of the World were begun in 1967 and not finished until 1986, with more editing done in 1987 -- a 20-year production. In that book she examines crew life through a female narrator's eyes as an ocean-going freighter makes 24 stops delivering mail and goods (beer, pop, toilet paper, logging camp supplies, even motorboats) to Vancouver Island places that had little or no access by road in the 1960s: Ucluelet, Bamfield, Hot Springs Cove, Gold River, Tahsis, Winter Harbour, Fair Harbour, Zeballos, Friendly Cove, etc.
"We often picked up whale meal in Coal Harbour where there was a whaling station and sometimes fish meal on our return trip at Ucluelet," she wrote in 2004. "When there was a storm, we sometimes were able to ride it out. I recall our 165-foot ship, the Tahsis Prince, drifting backwards for ten hours while the engineers had the engines going full steam ahead: we were that small and the storm that strong. Other times, we just hid behind an island or in a fiord and waited for as many as three days for the storm to subside enough. The only reason I got to cook on the boat (which I did more than I mess-girled) is that no one who had a cook's discharge in her sailing book wanted to. I was a relief worker only and sailed as a cook or messgirl on almost all the Northland Navigation boats on both the outer and inner coasts up to almost Alaska."
Hindmarch's writing has appeared in various publications including Iron, Imago, Periodics, boundary 2, Writing, and The Capilano Review and anthologies Cradle and All: Women Writers on Pregnancy and Birth (1989), Words We Call Home (1990), and Islands West: Stories From the Coast (2001). Hindmarch taught English at Capilano College from 1974 to 2002. Until the late 1990s she wrote under the name Gladys Hindmarch, but since then prefers to use her middle name, Maria, pronounced the Finnish way with emphasis on the first syllable. In 1999, Hindmarch was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, a relatively rare type of breast cancer, leading to a work-in-progress called Swimming with Cancer. "I am healthy right now. I swim. I dragon boat race. I love. I enjoy my life," she wrote.
BOOKS:
The Peter Stories (1976)
A Birth Account (1976)
The Watery Part of the World (1988)
Wanting Everything: The Collected Works (Talonbooks 2020) edited by Deanna Fong and Karis Shearer $29.95 9781772012484
[BCBW 2020] "Fiction"
Wanting Everything -- Publisher's Promo
Wanting Everything presents the collected works of Vancouver writer Gladys Hindmarch. In addition to reproducing newly revised editions of her book-length works (The Peter Stories, A Birth Account, and The Watery Part of the World), the volume collects unpublished works of prose as well as correspondence, criticism, oral history interviews, and occasional writing. Spanning over five decades, this diverse work challenges the conception of what constitutes a prolific literary career, extending the notion of writerly activity to include work that is social, collaborative, and dialogic. Hindmarch has made significant contributions to innovative feminist writing, covering topics such as the embodied experience of pregnancy and birth, working-class women's labour, and the intimacies of domesticity, all while sustaining an engagement with local places and social economies. Hindmarch's work embodies the notion of proprioception that was so central to the poetics of the TISH group and other experimental writing in the West Coast tradition. However, in Hindmarch, "sensibility within the organism" is revisited as a feminist stance that connects the experience of the body -- moving through space, breathing, labouring, connecting with others -- with a keen observational reading of situations, the self, and others. Wanting Everything recognizes Hindmarch's significant contribution to Canada's literary and cultural fields, making her work accessible to new readers and literary scholars, and framing it within the history of avant-garde writing, feminist production, and labour issues. Edited by Karis Shearer and Deanna Fong, this remarkable volume concludes with a brand-new, in-depth interview with the author.
Her books have had long gestation periods. She began writing her first two books, both published in 1976, back in 1961 (Peter Stories) and 1970 (Birth Account, about two pregnancies but one birth in 1971). Her stories that became The Watery Part of the World were begun in 1967 and not finished until 1986, with more editing done in 1987 -- a 20-year production. In that book she examines crew life through a female narrator's eyes as an ocean-going freighter makes 24 stops delivering mail and goods (beer, pop, toilet paper, logging camp supplies, even motorboats) to Vancouver Island places that had little or no access by road in the 1960s: Ucluelet, Bamfield, Hot Springs Cove, Gold River, Tahsis, Winter Harbour, Fair Harbour, Zeballos, Friendly Cove, etc.
"We often picked up whale meal in Coal Harbour where there was a whaling station and sometimes fish meal on our return trip at Ucluelet," she wrote in 2004. "When there was a storm, we sometimes were able to ride it out. I recall our 165-foot ship, the Tahsis Prince, drifting backwards for ten hours while the engineers had the engines going full steam ahead: we were that small and the storm that strong. Other times, we just hid behind an island or in a fiord and waited for as many as three days for the storm to subside enough. The only reason I got to cook on the boat (which I did more than I mess-girled) is that no one who had a cook's discharge in her sailing book wanted to. I was a relief worker only and sailed as a cook or messgirl on almost all the Northland Navigation boats on both the outer and inner coasts up to almost Alaska."
Hindmarch's writing has appeared in various publications including Iron, Imago, Periodics, boundary 2, Writing, and The Capilano Review and anthologies Cradle and All: Women Writers on Pregnancy and Birth (1989), Words We Call Home (1990), and Islands West: Stories From the Coast (2001). Hindmarch taught English at Capilano College from 1974 to 2002. Until the late 1990s she wrote under the name Gladys Hindmarch, but since then prefers to use her middle name, Maria, pronounced the Finnish way with emphasis on the first syllable. In 1999, Hindmarch was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, a relatively rare type of breast cancer, leading to a work-in-progress called Swimming with Cancer. "I am healthy right now. I swim. I dragon boat race. I love. I enjoy my life," she wrote.
BOOKS:
The Peter Stories (1976)
A Birth Account (1976)
The Watery Part of the World (1988)
Wanting Everything: The Collected Works (Talonbooks 2020) edited by Deanna Fong and Karis Shearer $29.95 9781772012484
[BCBW 2020] "Fiction"
Wanting Everything -- Publisher's Promo
Wanting Everything presents the collected works of Vancouver writer Gladys Hindmarch. In addition to reproducing newly revised editions of her book-length works (The Peter Stories, A Birth Account, and The Watery Part of the World), the volume collects unpublished works of prose as well as correspondence, criticism, oral history interviews, and occasional writing. Spanning over five decades, this diverse work challenges the conception of what constitutes a prolific literary career, extending the notion of writerly activity to include work that is social, collaborative, and dialogic. Hindmarch has made significant contributions to innovative feminist writing, covering topics such as the embodied experience of pregnancy and birth, working-class women's labour, and the intimacies of domesticity, all while sustaining an engagement with local places and social economies. Hindmarch's work embodies the notion of proprioception that was so central to the poetics of the TISH group and other experimental writing in the West Coast tradition. However, in Hindmarch, "sensibility within the organism" is revisited as a feminist stance that connects the experience of the body -- moving through space, breathing, labouring, connecting with others -- with a keen observational reading of situations, the self, and others. Wanting Everything recognizes Hindmarch's significant contribution to Canada's literary and cultural fields, making her work accessible to new readers and literary scholars, and framing it within the history of avant-garde writing, feminist production, and labour issues. Edited by Karis Shearer and Deanna Fong, this remarkable volume concludes with a brand-new, in-depth interview with the author.
