A Sudden Sun

A Sudden Sun

Behind the Story

My novel A Sudden Sun places the fictional story of Lily Hunt and her daughter Grace Collins against the real-life background of the women's suffrage movement in Newfoundland from 1892 to 1925. While all the main characters are fictional, their stories play out against a backdrop of real history than includes some real-life historical characters.

In the 1890s, Newfoundland was a self-governing Dominion of the British Empire, its status similar to that of Canada. All Newfoundland men had won the right to vote, but no women in Newfoundland had the franchise. At the time that was not unusual -- most countries restricted voting rights to men. But the growing movement for women's suffrage touched Newfoundland in a small way in the 1890s, even as it was to become a much bigger movement in Britain, the United States, and other countries. Soon after the end of the First World War, almost every English-speaking country in the world had given women the right to vote -- but Newfoundland women remained disenfranchised until 1925.

The research I did on Newfoundland suffragists rests heavily on the work of two other writers.

I was first intrigued by the story of the early Newfoundland feminists when I saw the film The Untold Story of the Suffragists of Newfoundland by Marion Frances White.

Some time later, when I began actually researching the subject, I returned again and again to Margot Iris Duley's excellent book Where Once our Mothers Stood We Stand: Women's Suffrage in Newfoundland 1890-1925.

I recommend both the film and the book to those who want to know more about the story behind A Sudden Sun.

Many historical events and people crop up in the pages of this book -- Lily's story opens on the day of the Great Fire of St. John's; the Collins family ends up living in William Coaker's model town of Port Union; two characters fight in the Newfoundland Regiment in World War One; Jack Perry goes to work with Sir Wilfred Grenfell's Labrador mission. Both Lily and Grace interact with real-life Newfoundland suffragists: Lily is deeply influenced by Jessie Murray Ohman, editor of the outspoken Water Lily newspaper (which you can read at the link below). Grace gets to know labour leader Julia Salter Earle, one of my personal heroines. A woman who doesn't appear in the pages of the book but whose early career was a bit of an inspiration for Grace's career path was Stella Burry, pioneer Newfoundland social worker -- I imagine Grace's later life imitating hers in some ways.

To learn more about some of the aspects of Newfoundland history that intersect with this story, follow the links below.

Many of the images and links above come from the Newfoundland Heritage website, a wonderful resource for anyone interested in NL history.