Background
Lois Simmie was born on June 11, 1932 in Edam, Canada; the daughter of Edwin Maurice Binns, a pool elevator agent, and Bessie Margaret (Thomson) Binns, a homemaker.
Saskatoon SK S7N 5A2, Canada
Lois Simmie attended the University of Saskatchewan.
(A collection of humorous poems covering such subjects as ...)
A collection of humorous poems covering such subjects as an attic fanatic, a brother who is afraid of germs, and a woman who knits strangely shaped baby clothes.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0531057623/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3
1984
(Pictures is Lois Simmie's second short story collection. ...)
Pictures is Lois Simmie's second short story collection. A longing for tranquillity and a compassion for human beings - the impatient little girl, the anxious secretary, the desolate alcoholic - suffuse these stories.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0920079067/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i6
1984
(Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Non-Fiction, The Sec...)
Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Non-Fiction, The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson is played out against a backdrop of catastrophic events - World War I, economic depression, the TB and Spanish Flu epidemics. It is a riveting story of passion, murder and retribution.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T57YVPO/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
1995
(On a dark and soggy night, a bedraggled cat finds its way...)
On a dark and soggy night, a bedraggled cat finds its way into the ivy-covered Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver's fashionable West End. Before long, Mister Got To Go has become not only a fixture at the hotel but a valuable employee.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0889951578/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
1995
(This novel is the funny, sad and engaging story of a shat...)
This novel is the funny, sad and engaging story of a shattered family's attempt to figure out where exactly each member fits.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1550502646/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5
2003
Lois Simmie was born on June 11, 1932 in Edam, Canada; the daughter of Edwin Maurice Binns, a pool elevator agent, and Bessie Margaret (Thomson) Binns, a homemaker.
Lois Simmie attended Saskatoon Business College and the University of Saskatchewan.
Canadian fiction writer Lois Simmie has spun a career that includes novels, short-story collections, an award-winning true-crime book, and several volumes of prose and verse for children. Her first novel, They Shouldn't Make You Promise That (1981), is the story of an unhappy homemaker who gradually loses her emotional grip. In the book, Eleanor Smith goes to a psychiatrist with no success, then leaves her husband.
By the time of her first novel's publication, Simmie had already released a volume of short stories, 1976's Ghost House; her next book of stories, Pictures, was published in 1984. Simmie's third collection of stories, Betty Lee Bonner Lives Here, was published in 1993.
Simmie ventured into true crime with the 1995 The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson. Wilson was a Scot who stole money from his wife's family in order to help his brother's failing business. Fleeing to Canada in 1912, he became a Canadian Mountie and did not, as he had promised, return to his wife and child in Scotland. Instead, he took up with a teenage girl named Jessie Patterson.
Simmie over the years has also established herself as a respected writer for children. Her 1988 Auntie's Knitting a Baby presents fifty-two poems, mostly humorous and some of them gruesome as well, in the vein of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky.
Simmie issued the children's picture book Mister Got to Go: The Cat That Wouldn't Leave in 1995. Set in the grand old Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver, the story concerns a cat who enters the hotel to get out of the rain. The manager maintains that the cat must leave when the rain stops, but in Vancouver, the rain rarely stops, and as the cat lingers, he gains the affection of staff and guests, including the manager himself.
Lois' latest book What I'm Trying to Say is Goodbye was published in 2003.
In addition, during her career, Lois served as a fiction instructor at Saskatoon Summer School of the Arts and held the post of an instructor at community colleges.
(A collection of humorous poems covering such subjects as ...)
1984(On a dark and soggy night, a bedraggled cat finds its way...)
1995(This novel is the funny, sad and engaging story of a shat...)
2003(Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Non-Fiction, The Sec...)
1995(Pictures is Lois Simmie's second short story collection. ...)
1984
Quotations:
"Although I always intended to write, I didn't actually get serious until I saw forty looming on the horizon. A late starter has some advantages - all that life experience and years of writing in your head plus all those good and bad books you've read. The good ones fill you with longing and the bad ones make you say I can write a better book than that! (You can only say this so often before you have to put up or shut up.) Your apprenticeship is shorter, and you don't struggle with developing a voice or style; your voice is simply who you have become."
"When I write for children I write with one aim in mind, to entertain the child. I hate message plays, books, songs for children. What's wrong with just making them laugh? In a wonderful children's book, like Charlotte's Web, there is a message but never at the expense of the story. Though I write to entertain, I take writing for children very seriously. We must take it seriously. What we can't take too seriously is ourselves."
Lois Simmie is a member of the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild, Canadian Children's Book Center, Writers' Union of Canada and Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists.
Lois Simmie is divorced and has four children - Odell, Leona, Anne and Scott.