Christie Harris
Christie Irwin Harris was a Canadian author born on November 21, 1907, in Newark, New Jersey, to an Irish immigrant family. The family moved to British Columbia in 1908, where Harris began her writing career at a young age, contributing articles to local newspapers and writing stories for children while teaching. She married Thomas Arthur Harris in 1932 and continued to develop her writing, creating content for various platforms, including the women's page of the Vancouver Daily Province and radio scripts for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
Her later works focused on retelling Pacific Northwest Indian tales, reflecting a deeper understanding of Indigenous cultures. Notable publications from her later career include "Once Upon a Totem," "West with the White Chiefs," and "Raven's Cry," which earned her several prestigious awards, such as the Canadian Library Association Book-of-the-Year Award. Harris's contributions to literature were recognized with multiple honors, culminating in the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. She passed away on January 5, 2002, in Vancouver, British Columbia, leaving behind a legacy of literary work that evolved over her lifetime.
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Subject Terms
Christie Harris
Writer
- Born: November 21, 1907
- Birthplace: Newark, New Jersey
- Died: January 5, 2002
- Place of death: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Biography
Christie Irwin Harris was born on November 21, 1907, in Newark, New Jersey. Members of her Irish immigrant family, which included four other children, were on their way to Canada when she was born. By early 1908, the family arrived in British Columbia and settled in the Shuswap area. During World War I, her father, Ed Irwin, went overseas, and the family relocated first to Vancouver and then to a farm in Cloverdale.
Harris was only twelve years old when she started writing newspaper reports for the New Westminster Columbian. These were the first of her writing efforts. When her father returned from the war and became involved with various farmers’ associations, she went along to meetings with him and wrote summaries of the meetings for publication in the local newspaper. By the age of seventeen, she had graduated from normal school and had started teaching at a school in Surrey. While teaching primary pupils in Vancouver, she wrote stories for them that were bought and published in the children’s section of the Vancouver Daily Province.
In 1932, when she was twenty-four, she married Thomas Arthur Harris, an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They had known one another since her youth on the family farm. They lived for a while in White Rock, where three of their five children were born, and then in the Lower Fraser Valley.
Harris’s writing evolved to include pieces for the women’s page in the Daily Province as well as radio scripts for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She also collaborated with composer Harry Biener on several projects, and for twenty years she contributed an adventure serial, skits, and even adult dramas to school broadcasts on the CBC. In the 1950’s, she was women’s editor for the Abbotsford- Sumas-Matsqui local weekly paper.
When her husband was transferred to Prince Rupert in 1958, she began to write a series of school broadcast scripts about Coastal Indian cultures. Her interest in native mythology and art led to her writing several books in which she recounts her version of Pacific Northwest Indian tales. Though her earliest such stories contained stereotypes and the condescension typical of the writing of the time, her later works, for which she is better known, show a better understanding and appreciation of native cultures.
From 1963 to 1966, she produced several books for young readers retelling folktales and legends, including Once Upon a Totem, West with the White Chiefs, and Raven’s Cry. She was awarded numerous honors for her work, including the Canadian Library Association Book-of-the-Year Award, the Canada Council’s Award for Children’s Literature, and in 1998, the fourth Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award for an Outstanding Literary Career in British Columbia. Christie Harris died in Vancouver, British Columbia, on January 5, 2002.