Calgary & Southern Alberta

Photo Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

Born at Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Mitchell has had a dramatic influence on the fiction of the West through his depictions of prairie settings and landscape. After studying at the Universities of Manitoba and Alberta, Mitchell settled in High River, Alberta, in 1944. He remained there until 1968 when he became a writer-in-residence at the Banff Centre, the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta, and Massey College, Toronto.

Mitchell received instant recognition as a writer when he published Who Has Seen the Wind in 1947. Through the character of Brian, and eccentric characters like drunkard Ben and madman Saint Sammy, Mitchell explored the beauty and power of the prairie landscape with the wind symbolising God. His other novels include: The Kite (1962); The Vanishing Point (1973); How I Spent My Summer Holidays (1981); Since Daisy Creek (1984); Ladybug, Ladybug… (1988); Roses are Difficult Here (1990).

Mitchell was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1973 and a Member of the Privy Council in 1992. He was awarded the Chalmers Award in 1976 for his play Back to Beulah and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 1962 and 1990 for hiscollections of Jake stories. Mitchell’s last public appearance was at the annual meeting of the Writer’s Union of Canada in Winnipeg on May 31, 1996. Already sick with prostate cancer, he could not walk and delivered his talk from a wheelchair. He died at his Calgary home at the age of 83 on February 25, 1998.