Selwyn Dewdney
Selwyn Hanington Dewdney was a Canadian author, educator, and researcher known for his deep engagement with Indigenous cultures and landscapes in Canada. Born to English Canadian parents in Saskatchewan, his formative years were influenced by his father's role as an Anglican bishop and missionary, which fueled his fascination with aboriginal tribes and the country's dramatic geography. Dewdney's educational background includes a Bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto and a diploma from the Ontario College of Art, leading to a career in teaching and art therapy.
Throughout his life, Dewdney wrote several notable works, including his first novel, *Wind Without Rain*, which explores the dichotomy between academic life in Southern Ontario and the freedom of the northern Canadian landscape. His writings often reflect a critique of societal values through the lens of Indigenous perspectives. His later novel, *Christopher Breton*, continues this theme, addressing the cultural tensions between white society and Indigenous values. In addition to fiction, Dewdney produced significant nonfiction works on native cultures and art, illustrating his commitment to understanding and valuing these communities. He also authored children's books, melding his adventurous spirit with literature for younger audiences. Dewdney's diverse contributions underscore his multifaceted approach to art, education, and cultural exploration.
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Subject Terms
Selwyn Dewdney
Author
- Born: October 22, 1909
- Birthplace: Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada
- Died: November 18, 1979
Biography
Selwyn Hanington Dewdney was born the son of English Canadian parents Alfred Daniel Alexander and Alice Ashwood Hanington Dewdney in the Saskatchewan district of Canada. Early on, his father, an Anglican bishop and missionary, instilled in his son a love and intense interest in both the aboriginal tribes and the dramatic geography of his country. When the younger Dewdney was twenty-two, he traveled with his father on a nearly four-thousand-mile journey to Indian and Eskimo missions, traversing over eight hundred miles by canoe.
His education included art school (Ontario College of Art), a B.A. from the University of Toronto (1931), and a teaching certificate (1932). In 1936, Dewdney married Irene Maude Donner, sharing her interest in psychiatric art therapy; he served as a part-time therapist at Westminster Hospital during his ten-year academic career as a teacher at Sir Adam Beck Collegiate Institute in London, Ontario. Together they produced four children: Donner, Alexander, Peter, and Christopher, two of whom became writers.
During his tenure as an instructor, Dewdney wrote his first novel Wind Without Rain, a creative work that draws on autobiographical sources and his love of the landscapes of the Precambrian Shield, which he had explored on many expeditions and geological surveys. The novel has been described as a symbolic representation of two alternate impulses of Dewdney’s life: the cultivated academics of Toronto, in Southern Ontario, and the constant visits to the northern Canada of the Shield or Ojibway. Symbolically, the two directions—north and south—came to set up an opposition in the novel between the materialism and banal social pressures of the academic system and the freedom, purity, and idealism of the northern landscape and its inhabitants. Intellectually, the novel is a social satire of a society not ready to hear its mocking. Sometimes denounced, the book was not popularly received but garnered somewhat of a small underground reputation.
Dewdney’s last novel, Christopher Breton, similarly draws on his life with a protagonist whose father is an Anglican minister and who represents the same banality and uselessness of the academic society depicted in Wind Without Rain. The latter novel critiques a white society’s false values when contrasted to Indian ones. The hero attempts to escape such values by uniting with a Nishinahbi woman, an action that metaphorically represents a possible merging (and learning from) of the two dissonant cultures. Such a suggestion validates Dewdney’s life spent investigating native cultures and eventually valuing them over his own “native” upbringing.
A great deal of Dewdney’s work involves nonfictional research and academic analysis of native culture (They Shared to Survive: The Native Peoples of Canada, The Sacred Scrolls of the Southern Ojibway) and native art (Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes). He also collaborated on, edited, introduced, or illustrated numerous volumes of scholarly content. Truly a renaissance man, Dewdney also wrote and illustrated several children’s books, incorporating his varied interests and adventurous life into literature for the young.