Margaret Buffie is a Canadian writer. She is famous for her dynamic and diverting fiction books for children in which she successfully unites the traits of fantasy and reality. The main heroes of Buffie’s writings are modern teenagers dealing with family problems.
Background
Margaret Buffie was born on March 29, 1945, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She is one of four daughters of Ernest William John Buffie, a lithographer, and Evelyn Elizabeth Leach.
When Buffie was twelve years old, her father died of cancer. Her mother had to do extra work to support the family. Later, this experience, as well as her childish fear of the dark, had a significant impact on Buffie’s future novels’ plots.
The young girl, Buffie spent a lot of time at Long Pine Lake in Ontario, living in a log cabin built by her grandfather in 1919.
Education
Margaret Buffie received the general education at Sparling Elementary School, the Sargeant Park High School and Daniel McIntyre High School, both latter in Winnipeg, Canada.
She pursued her studies at the University of Manitoba where she gained the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1976.
Margaret Buffie was not always a writer, she started her career as a visual artist. From 1968 to 1970, she worked as a fashion illustrator at the Hudson's Bay Company. Four years after her dismissal, she found a job at the Winnipeg Art Gallery where she has fulfilled the duties of a painting instructor. In 1976, she left the post and tried her hand as a teacher of art in the River East School Division in her native Winnipeg. A year later, Buffie started to earn her living as a freelance illustrator and painter.
Looking at her teenage daughter Christine Anne, Margaret began to remember her own childhood. It was at this point that Buffie started to note down her memories of the log cabin at Long Pine Lake and of her father’s death in a journal. She soon appreciated many of her daughter’s books and understood that she enjoyed writing more than painting.
She finally began working on her first novel, ‘Who is Frances Rain?’, published in 1987 by Kids Can Press under the title ‘The Haunting of Frances Rain’. The first in a successful series of ghost stories for young adults combined such genres as mystery, ghost story, and time-travel fantasy with a sensitive depiction of a fractured modern family.
During the following years, Buffie created many other novels, including ‘The Guardian Circle’, ‘My Mother’s Ghost’, ‘The Dark Garden’, and a 2010 story called ‘Winter Shadows’.
Nowadays, Margaret Buffie continues to work on her fascinating stories in her office in Winnipeg on winters, and in her residence in North Western Ontario in the summer.
Quotations:
"I don’t believe great lives die. There is a link between generations – characteristics passed on, stories told – and I explore those links."
Membership
Writers’ Union of Canada
,
Canada
Canadian Authors Association
,
Canada
Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators, and Performers
,
Canada
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Margaret Buffie is a kind of literary archeologist exploring the people who occupy her stories. It’s a search that’s not likely to disappoint her readers." Peter Carver, author and editor
Interests
photography, canoeing
Connections
Margaret Buffie married a teacher James Macfarlane on August 9, 1968. Three years later, their daughter, Christine Anne, was born.