Canadian Weird Tales writers sounds like a very small group. Weren’t Pulp writers a bunch of hacks in crappy apartments in New York City? Their Science Fiction brothers dorky guys who lived with their families in Brooklyn or Yonkers? According to John Bell and The Far North and Beyond (1998) several WT writers were from the Great White North.
There was a strong tradition in Canada of having an idyllic boyhood among the wilds, receiving a good scholarly education at McGill then moving to either London or New York to become famous as did Grant Allen or Hulbert Footner. Publishing in Canada did not offer many avenues to fame or fortune so foreign markets were the answer.
The writers of Weird Tales were no exception. “The Unique Magazine” used material from everywhere as long as it was strange and unusual. Some wrote often, others only once. Weird Tales, as part of a Canadian Government requirement, had covers painted in Canada by mostly unknown artists (though Edmond Good was one of them) between 1942-1946. That was a case of the Canadian government trying to create opportunities for Canucks (mostly in Toronto) but there were Canadians there already.
H. Bedford-Jones (1887-1949)
Henry James O’Brien Bedford-Jones was the king of the Adventure Pulps but he did write for WT ten times. Born in Napanee, Ontario, he earned the name “The King of the Pulps”. He used the same trick as Lester Dent, writing two novels at a time on two separate typewriters.
“The Sleeper” (October 1934)
“The Artificial Honeymoon” (July 1940)
“The Kings Do Battle Again” (September 1940) as Gordon Keynes
“The Wife of the Humorous Gangster” (November 1940)
“The Affair of the Shuteye Medium” (March 1941)
“His Last Appearance” (July 1943)
“From the House of the Rat Catcher” (March 1944)
“Unpublished Story” (May 1944)
“In the Beginning” (March 1945)
“Gimlet-Eye Gunn” (September 1951)
O. M. Cabral (1919-1997)
Olga Marie Cabral was a Canadian poet and Weird Tales author. She was born in Trinidad in 1919. She died in New York City in 1997. Terrance Hanley at Tellers of Weird Tales goes into how Olga was not two other Weird Tales writers, Kenneth H. McNichol (her husband) or Everil Worrell. Ms. Cabral grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba but moved the US by 1930. She didn’t start writing until after moving to New York. She got her start in the Shudder Pulp, Thrilling Mystery. These supernatural-appearing, rather hysterical stories, always have a logical and rational explanation at the end. They paid rather well.
“Mirage” (January 1941)
“Unhallowed Holiday” (September 1941)
After the Weird Tales, Cabral dedicated herself to her poetry (which oddly, never appeared in Weird Tales). She won both the Emily Dickinson Award (1971) and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award (1976).
Grace M. Campbell (1895-1963)
She appeared once with “The Law of the Hills” (August 1930)
Gordon Philip England (1901-1992)
GPE wrote exclusively for WT. Born in St. Armand-est, Quebec, he was not related to SF writer, George Allan England.
“The Master of Hell” (February 1925)
“Adventures of an Astral” (March 1925)
“The House, the Light, and the Man” (June 1925)
“The Acid in the Laboratory” (November 1925)
“The Fourth Victim” (January 1927)
“White Orchids” (December 1927)
“The Blue Room” (November 1936)
Francis Flagg (George Henry Weiss) (1898-1946)
I’ve written on Flagg before. Find it here. He was from Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was a fan of H. P. Lovecraft and wrote some quasi-Mythos fiction for WT.
“The Chemical Brain” (January 1927)
“The Dancer in the Crystal” (December 1929)
“The Jelly-Fish” (October 1930)
“The Picture” (February/March 1931)
“The Distortion Out of Space” (August 1934)
“To Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (March 1938)
“The Dreamer in the Desert” (May 1942)
“The Snake” (November 1943)
Charles Christopher Jenkins (1882-1943)
C. C. Jenkins wrote “The Luster of the Beast” (March 1926) and not much else.
Thomas P. Kelley (1905-1982)
Kelley, from Hastings, Ontario, was called the ‘king of the Canadian pulp writers’. He was a man of many pseudonyms though he didn’t use them in WT. After the Pulps he became infamous in the paperback business, writing of The Black Donnellys.
He wrote three serial novels for Weird Tales:
“The Last Pharaoh” (May June July August 1937)
“I Found Cleopatra” (November December 1938 January February 1939)
“A Million Years in the Future” (January March May July 1940)
Victor Lauriston (1881-1973)
He appeared once with “The Changeling’s Soul” (January 1925).
L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942)
I’ve written about “The House Party at Smoky Island” (August 1935) before. Read it here. Montgomery is legend in Canada for writing the classic Anne of Green Gables. She put Prince Edward Island on the map.
Douglas Oliver
Douglas Oliver wrote “The Last Man” (December 1925).
N. J. O’Neail
O’Neial appeared three times:
“The Gallows Tree” (December 1929)
“The Flame-Fiend” (September 1930)
“Devouring Shadows” (February 1932)
Denis Plimmer
Denis Plimmer wrote twice for Weird Tales:
“The Green Invasion” (November 1940)
“The Devil’s Tree” (July 1941)
R. T. M. Scott (1882-1966)
R. T. M. Scott was born in Woodstock, Ontario. His son, R. T. M. Scott II was also a Pulp writer. RTMS appeared the very first issue of Weird Tales with “Nimba, the Cave Girl” (March 1923). He appeared alongside Antony M. Rud and Otis Adelbert Kline.
Norman Springer (1887-?)
Springer appeared in the infamous last Edwin Baird issue with “Impostor” (May/June/July 1924).
Starrett is famous as a critic and in Mystery fiction circles. He was born in Toronto, Ontario, above a bookstore. How appropriate! He made eight appearances in Weird Tales, both fiction and poetry.
“Penelope” (May 1923)
“Riders in the Dark” (July/August 1923)
“The Money-Lender” (September 1923)
“The Quick and the Dead” (December 1932)
“Cordelia’s Song” (April 1938)
“Othello Time” (January 1939)
“In an Old Street” (April 1939)
“Dupin and Another” (August 1939)
Yves Theriault (1915-1983)
Yves Theriault appeared only once with “The Barren Field” (November 1949). This story is special to me because it was in the very first issue of WT I bought. The Coye illo is classic.
Robert Watson (1882-1948)
Watson appeared once with “The Ghost of Mad Leveen” (January 1929).
The one thing I notice about these writers and their stories is the early dates. The vast majority appeared during the Farnsworth Wright years. When the magazine became part of Dorothy McIlwraith’s stable in NYC, the Canadians disappear. Yves Theriault and H. Bedford-Jones is the exception, though Jones might have been a New Yorker by the 1940s.
Next time, we will look at the Science Fiction writers from Canada, an even bigger crowd.
