Letters from Toronto: Representing Mid-Twentieth Century Ontario Life to an English Pen Friend.

Colin Pooley, Lancaster University

Information gained from trusted personal contacts can be more influential than official news media in shaping perceptions and opinions. In this paper I examine the ways in which a young, female, Toronto resident (Jean) wrote about her life in the city in the mid-twentieth century, and reflect on the impacts this may have had on her English pen pal (Betty). The pen-pal correspondence began in 1946 when both women were 18 years old, and continued regularly until shortly before Jean’s death in 2013. I don’t have the letters written by Betty from England, but I do have all her personal diaries so am able to link the two lives quite precisely. Both women remained unmarried, and although they had some interests in common, their education and experiences were very different. For instance, while Jean stayed in education until she was 18, enjoyed all the amenities of a big city, and travelled widely, Betty left school at 13, lived in rural north Lancashire, and rarely travelled more than 30 miles from her home. This paper focuses on the period from 1946 to the mid-1960s. Certain key themes occur repeatedly in the letters written by Jean, including the extremes of Toronto weather, her access to high-quality entertainment, and her travel for holidays elsewhere in the Americas. These were all very different from Betty’s experiences. Common themes, which they discussed regularly, included an avid interest in the British Royal family, involvement in their local churches, films they had seen, and gossip about their friends and relatives. The pen-pal correspondence would have widened the horizons of both young women and gave Betty access to intimate details of life in a city and country that she never visited.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 73. Novel Sources and Distant Pasts Across Global Geographies