W.O. Mitchell’s typewriter lives in a university archive in Calgary. Pretty cool. The detail comes from the University of Calgary archives, which hold a W.O. Mitchell fonds measuring 22.08 metres. That tells you how seriously this city takes the man.
Where he came from
He was born on March 13, 1914, in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. The Athabasca University writers page says he had bovine tuberculosis of the wrist as a boy and spent winters from 1926 on in California and Florida for treatment. It also lists study at the University of Manitoba, the University of Washington and the University of Alberta, where he finished his B.A. and teaching certificate in 1943.
So the writer who became Alberta’s own started as a Saskatchewan kid who travelled for his health. Alberta was where he landed, and we’re lucky it was.
Why High River
The Canadian Encyclopedia and the University of Calgary archives both say he settled in High River in 1944 and stayed until 1968. Athabasca University dates his move to 1945, when he quit teaching to write full time, so the exact year is one the sources don’t settle.
What they all agree on is the result. In 1947 he published Who Has Seen the Wind, which the Canadian Encyclopedia says brought him instant recognition. Athabasca University says it has sold nearly one million copies in Canada. Nearly one million. For a prairie novel.
Jake and the Kid
A radio habit, and a big one. The series ran weekly on CBC Radio from 1950 to 1956, and Athabasca University counts more than 200 episodes. The University of Calgary archives say it made Mitchell a national celebrity. It was later televised in 1961.
He also edited fiction at Maclean’s from 1948 to 1951, the Canadian Encyclopedia says. That’s a day job most novelists would envy and few could survive alongside a weekly radio series.
What he did for other writers
Plenty. Athabasca University says he founded the creative writing program at the Banff Centre and taught at several universities, including the University of Calgary. The archives and the Canadian Encyclopedia both say he directed the Banff Centre Writing Division from 1975 to 1985, and the archives describe a teaching approach he called his messy method.
That teaching side is where his real Calgary legacy sits. After his death, the Canadian Encyclopedia notes, the W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize was set up for a writer with a substantial body of work who has mentored new writers. The prize is named for a man who spent decades coaching people who weren’t him. Love that.
The honours he collected
He became an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1973, a date the Canadian Encyclopedia and Athabasca University agree on. Later honours are dated differently across sources, so we’ll leave the list there. He died in Calgary on February 25, 1998, after living in the city for the final decades of his life.
Where to meet him now
The fonds is the best answer. The University of Calgary archives say it holds correspondence, manuscripts of novels, short stories, stage plays, radio plays, television plays and film scripts, teaching records, photographs, audio-visual recordings and personal artifacts.
If you care about how an Alberta writer actually worked, request it through the archives and start with the radio scripts. The books made him famous, but the boxes show the craft. Go see for yourself.
Keep going with The year Joni Mitchell spent in Calgary before she took off or Betty Mitchell, the botanist who built Calgary theatre, whichever calls to you. Or try Four Halls of Fame Share One Calgary Address for a change of pace.
More from the archive: Calgary Had a Literary Scene in the 1920s and Someone Mapped It and Where to Dig Into Calgary’s Past, All Under Three Roofs.
Quick answers
W.O. Mitchell was born on March 13, 1914, in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. The Canadian Encyclopedia and the University of Calgary archives both say he settled in High River, Alberta, in 1944 and stayed until 1968. He finished his B.A. and teaching certificate at the University of Alberta in 1943.
Who Has Seen the Wind is the novel W.O. Mitchell published in 1947. The Canadian Encyclopedia says it brought him instant recognition, and Athabasca University says it has sold nearly one million copies in Canada.
Jake and the Kid was a weekly series on CBC Radio from 1950 to 1956, and Athabasca University counts more than 200 episodes. The University of Calgary archives say it made Mitchell a national celebrity. It was later televised in 1961.
