One of a remarkable generation of women who dominated the
radio, community and educational theatre of the first half of the century,
Elsie Park Gowan, like her close friend, Gwen Pharis Ringwood, soon found
that her accomplishments as a writer overshadowed her other talents as
a director, adjudicator, teacher and actor. Gowan's most memorable stage
plays include her popular one-act historical comedy, Breeches From Bond
Street(1949), The Last Caveman, a full-length comedy that was
toured in the western provinces over 1946-1947 by Everyman Theatre, one
of Western Canada's first professional theatre companies, and The Jasper
Story(1956), a historama that played to literally thousands of spectators
in Jasper during its nine-year run.
However, it was as a radio dramatist that Gowan really made her
mark. Gowan's first two series of historical plays for radio - New Lamps
for Old, co-written with Ringwood over 1936-1937, and The Building
of Canada 1937-1938 helped pioneer radio series writing in the prairie
provinces and displayed the deep love of history and passion for social
justice that characterized her best work. Between 1939 and 1958, she wrote
over 200 scripts for local and national radio, some of them reaching audiences
in America, Britain, Australia, the Caribbean and South America. She relinquished
writing for teaching after being widowed in 1958, serving first as a high
school teacher between 1959 and 1971 and then as a writing instructor for
senior citizens until ill health forced her to retire when she was in her
late 80s.
She very much valued the honorary membership ACTR bestowed on
her in Calgary in recognition of her earlier contributions to Canadian
theatre, and the plaque hung on her wall until she died quietly in her
sleep at the age of 94.
Moira Day