Alfred Earle Birney was
born in Calgary on May 13th 1904. He was raised on
a farm in Erickson, British Columbia which made for
an isolated childhood. After working as a farm
hand, a bank clerk, and a park ranger, he went on
to college to study chemical engineering but graduated
with a degree in English. He was educated at University
of British Columbia, University of Toronto, Berkeley
and University of London. His primary interests were
in Old and Middle English, culminating in a thesis
on Chaucer. Through a brief and quickly annulled marriage
to Sylvia Johnston, he was introduced to Trotskyism,
a practice of communism developed by Trotsky which
includes the concept of worldwide revolution as opposed
to socialism in one country. In the 1930s he was an
active Trotskyist in Canada and Britain but drifted
away from the movement during World War II where he
served as a personnel officer in the Canadian Army.
Birney went on to have an important career as a teacher
of creative writing and literature, and as a playwright,
novelist and editor. He taught at several universities,
most notably at the University of British Columbia
from 1946 to 1965. It was there that he founded the
very first Canadian department of creative writing
in 1963. He won the Governor General's Award for poetry
twice, one of which was for David in 1942. In 1970
he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Sadly,
he died on September 3rd in Toronto, Canada.
