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W. O. Mitchell was born in Weyburn in 1914, and lived there throughout most of his early life, except for several years spent in the southern U.S. fighting his case of tuberculosis. After 1930, he attended the University of Manitoba, but his studies were cut short by a recurrence of TB. He thereafter worked in several cities at a wide variety of jobs, and began to work seriously at writing. In 1940 he enrolled at the University of Alberta, and received his B.A. and teaching certificate. He met his wife Merna there, and had three of his stories published before he began teaching high school in small towns in Alberta. In 1947, his first novel, Who Has Seen the Wind, was published: it met with immediate popularity and critical acclaim which allowed him to devote himself entirely to writing. In 1948 he moved to Toronto to become the fiction editor at Maclean’s magazine. At this time he wrote the hugely popular Jake and the Kid series for CBC Radio, which continued over eight years and 320 episodes. In 1951, he moved to High River, Alberta, where he continued to write the radio series along with his other works. He released two novels and several plays over the next 17 years. Between 1968 and 1988 he wrote another four novels and several dramatic works as he taught creative writing at Canadian universities. In 1973, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada; in 1989 he won the Stephen Leacock award for According to Jake and the Kid; and in 1992 he was made an honourary member of the Privy Council. In 1991 the original, previously unreleased version of Who Has Seen the Wind was released, which contains the 7000 words that were deleted from the original copy by the publisher. The novel remains a classic of Canadian literature today, and has sold over half a million copies in Canada. W. O. Mitchell died in Calgary in 1998.

Bibliography

Who Has Seen the Wind. Toronto: Macmillan, 1947.

Jake and the Kid. Toronto: Macmillan, 1961.

The Kite. Toronto: Macmillan, 1962.

The Devil’s Instrument. Toronto: Simon and Pierre Publishers, 1973.

The Vanishing Point. Toronto: Macmillan, 1973.

The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon. Calgary: Frontier Pub., 1976; Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993.

How I Spent My Summer Holidays. Toronto: Macmillan, 1981.

Dramatic W. O. Mitchell. Toronto: Macmillan, 1982.

Since Daisy Creek. Toronto: Macmillan, 1984.

Ladybug, Ladybug. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988.

According to Jake and the Kid. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989.

Roses are Difficult Here. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990.

For Art’s Sake: A New Novel. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992.

An Evening with W.O. Mitchell. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1997.