Muriel Wylie Blanchet

Background

Muriel Wylie Blanchet was born on May 2, 1891, in Montreal, Montreal Region, Quebec, Canada. She was third of five children of Charles Albert Liffiton and Carrie Jane Snetsinger.

Education

Muriel Blanchet and her sisters were tutored at home prior to attending a private girl's school near Montreal.

Career

In 1922 Muriel Wylie Blanchet moved to Vancouver Island with her husband and children. Four years later she found herself a widow with five young mouths to feed following her husband’s fatal sailing accident. Friends and relatives advised her to leave the seacoast, but instead, Blanchet bravely remained on the island and, where many people might have become afraid of the sea, she embraced it as a source of renewed life.

Beginning in the summer of 1928, she made annual excursions in her twenty-five-foot boat called "Caprice" to show her children the natural wonders of the Northwest Coast. The dangers on such trips were real. Navigation could be problematic: hikes and climbs could be obscured by dense fog, animals such as bears and cougars sometimes watched the family; and once, one of the children broke a collarbone in a situation where no professional help was available. Nevertheless, Blanchet and her children survived and thrived.

Blanchet’s book on the subject of those family sailing trips, "The Curve of Time", was published in 1961, just a few months before the author’s own death. It received enthusiastic reviews, on the whole, and has become something of a cult classic among lovers of nature books. Blanchet’s enrichment of her children included not only piloting them around the coast of British Columbia, but writing original stories for them. In the 1930s she penned "A Whale Named Henry" as bedtime material for the children. The book was not published until 1983, approximately fifty years later. She was found dead in 1961, slumped over her typewriter while writing a sequel to "The Curve of Time".

Achievements

• Muriel Wylie Blanchet is an incredible author. Her "The Curve of Time" (1961) became the most enduring bestseller about sailing and cruising along the Pacific coast of Canada.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Whale Named Henry

    (This story about a slightly mixed-up young killer whale l...)

    1983
  • The Curve of Time

    (This is the fascinating true adventure story of a woman w...)

    2011

Views

Quotations: "Enjoyment is always greatest when you have enough contrast to measure it by."

"Look well of to-day - for it is the Life or Life. In its brief course lie all the variations and realities of your life - the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and To-morrow a vision. But To-day well lived makes every Yesterday a dream of happiness, and every To-morrow a vision of hope."

"Our world then was both wide and narrow -- wide in the immensity of sea and mountain; narrow in that the boat was very small, and we lived and camped, explored and swam in a little realm of our own making."

Personality

Considered a tomboy in her younger years, Muriel also made a name for herself as a rower. However, an early photograph of Muriel taken by the well-known Notman Studios emphasizes her more feminine side. Her stylish hat and suit imply a comfortable economic status.

Connections

On May 30, 1909 Muriel Blanchet married Geoffrey Orme Blanchet, a Montreal bank manager. He mysteriously disappeared in 1926 during a solo boat trip. They had five children.

Father:

Charles Albert Liffiton

Mother:

Carrie Jane Liffiton

Spouse:

Geoffrey Orme Blanchet

Sister:

Marguerite Irving Liffiton

Sister:

Violet Liffiton Winans

Brother:

Gray Goddall Liffiton

Daughter:

Elizabeth Houghton Perry

Daughter:

Frances Irving Ronald

Daughter:

Joan Blanchet

Son:

Peter Hunton Blanchet

Son:

David Hilary Blanchet

Friend:

Gray Campbell

References

• Following the Curve of Time: The Legendary M. Wylie Blanchet Who was this skipper, this mother, this writer? These questions motivated Cathy Converse to re-trace the route of famous pacific seafarer M. Wylie Capi Blanchet, and write a biography in the process. Widowed in 1926, Blanchet cruised the coast with her five children and their dog in a 25-foot boat that had been rescued from the seafloor.
  2008