The Early Years: The Beginnings of a Writer
Sunday, July 18th 1926, at 7:30pm at the Neepawa General Hospital, one of Canada's greatest authors, Margaret Laurence, was born to proud parents Robert and Verna Wemyss. Verna's father, John Simpson, was a self-made man. Born in 1853 in Middletown Ontario, John attended school, training to be a cabinetmaker. In the 1870's John, with only his change in his pocket, made his way towards Portage la Prairie Manitoba, in an attempt to unite with a cousin who sold clothing there. While working in the clothing store, John met his future wife, Jane Bailey. Four years after marrying Jane the Simpson family decided to move north, towards to the newly founded town of Neepawa.
Margaret's Laurence's grandmother, Margaret Weymss, whom she was named after, came from a proud family. Margaret Weymss' great-grandfather was the Minister of Agriculture, and at one point the Premier of Manitoba. Margaret Laurence's grandfather, John Weymss, came from England to Neepawa in 1883. John Weymss, Neepawa's first lawyer, was a bright aristocratic man dying tragically, two weeks after the birth of his granddaughter Margaret.
This was only the beginning of the many tragic deaths that Margaret's family endured in her first twenty years of life. At the young age of four, Margaret's mother Verna Simpson died. The death of Margaret's mother had a profound effect on the once bright and bubbly girl. It was Verna who first nicknamed her daughter Margaret, "Peggy", a name by which Margaret was addressed as for almost 40 years. After Verna's death, her older sister, Margaret Simpson, quickly moved in with Peggy and her father. A year after moving in, Margaret Simpson married Robert Weymss, becoming "mother" to Peggy. In 1935, another tragedy shook the Weymss household. Peggy's father Robert died after catching pneumonia. Margaret's last family death in her early years was in 1936 when Peggy's grandmother Jane, contracted Polio. It was around this time that Peggy began to write, in an attempt to escape the horrible nightmare she was living, by creating imaginary worlds. Margaret found that writing was the only way she could control external events, such as life and death.
At the age of thirteen Margaret Laurence's first story "Pillars of a Nation" was published in the newspaper TheWinnipeg Free Press. The fictional town name Manawaka first appeared in this story. Her second work published in the Winnipeg Free Press was "The Case of the Blond Butcher" only a few months after the first.
John Eaton died in 1856, leaving Margaret a small fortune. She lived in Washington DC with her two daughters, both of whom married into high society. It seemed as though Margaret finally had the societal life and respect she had always wanted. She changed all of that when, at the age of 59, she married her granddaughter’s 19 year old dance tutor, Antonio Buchignani. A mere five years later, he ran off to Italy with her money and her granddaughter.
Soon after this is when she married her first husband named Martin Van Bergen who was a cowboy singer. Together they had a child and it was a boy. They named him William Logan Van Bergen. When he was five years old he was living with his grandmother in Kansas. During this time Lucille had recently divorced Martin. Martin Van Bergen was furious and filed to sue Lucille for divorcing him. He charged her with desertion and also naming Homer Wilson in other serious ways. He wanted to take custody of William. The petition had argued that Lucille had deserted him more than a year before and had been traveling around the country with a Wild West show. She had been one of the most popular performer in the “Stampede” shown in Winnipeg the year before. All of her success shown in roping and tying steers had made her many admirers. She won the world’s championship women’s bucking contest defeating several remarkable
Jane was born Jane Wilkinson on July 23, 1798, in Charles County, Maryland.She was the tenth child of Captain William Mackall and Anne Herbert Wilkinson. When Jane was less than a year old her father died. In 1811 her mother moved them to Mississippi Territory. The following year her mother died and she became an orphan at the age of 14. She moved in with her older sister,Barbara,and her husband,Alexander, on their plantation near Natchez. She met her soon to be husband James Long while she was there. They ended up married to each other on May 14, 1815.For the next four years they lived in vicinity and soon became a merchant in Natchez, In 1816, when Jane was 18, she gave birth to her first child Ann on November 26. Later she had another daughter, Rebecca, on June 16, 1819. Twelve days after Rebecca was born Jane wanted to join her husband in Nacogdoches, so she left with her two children and slave, Kian.She left them at the Calvit’s. Jane became ill, but she kept on with the trip and didn’t reach Nacogdoches till August.After a short amount of time she was staying there she had to move with other families to the Sabine to run away from the Spanish troops from San Antonio. She later returned to the Calvit’s to find out that her youngest daughter,Rebecca, had died. James and her
one of the few jobs open to women. She started her 'voyage' at age fifteen by
Marr, D. (1976). Early processing of visual information. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London Ser. B, 275, 483-524.
Margaret Garner, an enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America, was born on June 4, 1834, at Maplewood plantation in Boone County, Ky. Her parents were slaves belonging to the
Margaret Brent stands out in the beginning of American history for her daring and self-determination. She never married but that did not keep stop her from flourishing in a world ruled by men. Instead, she became a successful businesswoman, trading land and servants, and earned the respect of Governor Leonard Calvert, who entrusted her with managing his estate upon his death. (Witkowski) While these achievements were both unusual and significant, Margaret is best known for being the first woman in America to request the right to vote.
Pierre Trudeau is the greatest Canadian of the twentieth century due to the fact that he declared Canada’s independence from Great Britain, he abolished the death penalty, and he created the Official Languages Act, making our nation entirely bilingual.
John Alexander Macdonald was born in Glasgow, Scotland on January 11, 1815. His family immigrated to Canada (Kingston, Ontario) in 1820, Macdonald was five years old at the time. In 1829 Macdonald ended his schooling, his parents could not afford to send him to university. Macdonald would later say that if he had went to university he would have ended up in literature, not politics. (Waite, John, 7-10)
had to carry on working the family farm by herself. With the death of his
She also reported that her father did not believe she was his biological child. Margaret commented that she believed her father was an alcoholic, as he frequently came home drunk and hit her a lot. Margaret said that when her father would do this, he thought he was disciplining her and did not know how to control his anger. She also reported that she was not able to sleep until he fell asleep. Margaret subsequently reported that her mother frequently compared her with her older sister in a negative manner. Margaret also reported that when she left home at the age of 16 she met a guy and was in a relationship with him. She lived with him for four years, but he yelled at her and hit her a lot for not doing things right. She also stated that she is currently in a complicated relationship with her boyfriend and that he is the reason she is in prison. When asked about her support system, Margaret reported that when she was younger she tried making friends with her sister’s friends, but they did not like her. Therefore, she said that “she spent time at the park with whoever was there, so she didn’t have to go home.” She did not indicate if she currently has a support system. Margaret also said that she had not experienced any good losses, but “good riddance to those who
...ing insane, then you, yourself, are insane. Life sends us obstacles, the way we handle them, that should be what classifies us as sane or insane. We believe, we have the right to call the people we have yet to understand insane, but we have no rights. Insanity is a personal opinion, and no one deserves to be locked away because one person finds them crazy. But, no one deserves to get away with murdering someone in cold blood because they plea insane.
Muller, N. G., Bartelt, O. A., Donner, T. H., Villringer, A. & Brandt, S. A. (2003). A physiological correlate of the “zoom lens” of visual attention. The Journal of Neuroscience, 23(9): 3561-3565.
The justification of mental capacity; insanity is descried as a person should not be found guilty of the criminal crime because the person does not have mental capacity to know right from wrong within the crime (GA Code § 16-3-2, 2015). For this justification to exculpate the criminal suspect of lawbreaking, the suspect must show hard evidence that they have some type of mental issue during the crime. Mental disorder demonstrates the formation of an illegitimate act should not be a disagreement (Thompson, 2001). If the suspect is can show that he or she has mental illness, which can hinder him or her from going to penitentiary. However, the suspect will be sentences to a mental medical center for insane individuals for a while. Just by being sentences to a mental medical center is the same being sent to penitentiary.
Anybody can claim that they are mentally ill until someone investigates. What state you live in also plays a part in how the county determines if you are “insane”. There are 51 types of insanity defense in the united states. There is one for each state law and 1 federal law. As a country, only 0.85% of defendants actually raises the insanity defense nationwide. That is a very small percentage based on how many people plea insanity in