Background

Suzanne Martel was born on October 8, 1924, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. She was a daughter of Francis Xavier Chouinard, a clerk, and Lady Couillard.

Martel had a younger sister Monique who also became a popular writer in Quebec known under the name of Monique Corriveau.

Education

Suzanne Martel’s life-long love affair with writing began in early childhood. When she was seven, she and her four-year-old sister, later known as a writer Monique Corriveau, created a family of imaginary characters who lived in the walls of their Quebec City home.

The family, which included soldiers, aviators, mountain climbers, and even a woman admiral, absorbed the two girls completely. School vacations were spent locked in their room, writing. Evenings were often devoted to reading aloud what they had written, then their mother put her foot down and forbade them from writing more than eight hours a day, young Suzanne and Monique were unfazed.

When they were teenagers, the sisters spent much of their time designing the Montcorbiers, inspired by photographs of actors and actresses.

Martel attended the School of the Ursulines, Quebec, and then studied at the University of Toronto in Ontario.

Career

Suzanne Martel began her career in 1945 when she got a job of a journalist in a Quebecois newspaper Le Soleil. After serving in that capacity for a year, she became a freelancer. She earned her living as a manager for Avon Canada, an organizer of blood-donor clinics.

For years, Martel wrote an annual Christmas story, which she entered every year in a newspaper competition. She won the prize so often that the newspaper ended up appointing her to the jury that judged the stories.

The first published story of Martel, 1963 ‘Quatre Montréalais en l'an 3000’, which was translated into English as ‘The City Under Ground’ the following year, also had its beginnings in a writing contest. Martel found out about the contest, which closed at the end of January, in mid-December. To meet the deadline, she hired a babysitter to look after the children during the day and her husband volunteered to look after them in the evenings. Martel not only won the contest but also expanded the story into her first book, which was published when she was thirty-six.

In 1967, Martel was in charge of a pavilion at the International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, Canada known as Expo 67. Four years later, the author established a weekly children’s magazine Safari. She edited the publication until it was purchased by La Presse in 1974.

The same year, Martel submitted to competition her another story, ‘Jeanne, fille du roi’. It won a prize and appeared in Chatelaine magazine. In 1980, the story was translated into English as The King's Daughter.

The subsequent years, Suzanne Martel published many other stories and novels, all of which were written in French. The saga about the Montcorbier family that Suzanne and her sister Monique had initiated while growing up occupied a special place among the writings. Both accomplished writers, the sisters gathered the forgotten story in a series of manuscripts, seventeen by Corriveau, and ten by Martel. Two of Corriveau’s have been published as books for adults, as have three of Martel’s.

Achievements

• Suzanne Martel is considered as one of the foremost authors of adventure stories for children in Canada.
  
  A prolific writer, she authored about twenty-five fiction and nonfiction books for youngsters and adults. Many of her works were translated into different languages, including Spanish and Japanese.
  
  Her ‘Fille du Roi’ (The King's Daughter) and ‘Quatre Montréalais en l'an 3000’ (The City Underground) is included in the curriculum of many highs schools of Quebec and Ontario.
  
  During her lifetime, Martel won such awards as ACELF Prize, Alvine-Bélisle ASTED Prize, Canadian Authors' Association Awards Program Vicky Metcalf Body of Work Award, Air Canada Award, Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award, Canada Council Children's Literature Prize, and Governor-General's Literary Award among others.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Pee-Wee

    (Based on a true event that happened in June of 2008, in N...)

    1974
  • The King's Daughter

    (Jeanne Chatel has always dreamed of adventure. So when th...)

    1974
  • The City Under Ground 1963
  • Robot Alert 1981

Views

Although Suzanne Martel’s ideas were born in her imagination, she recognized that facts and details were important, whether she was writing historical fiction such as The King’s Daughter, or a contemporary novel about hockey, such as ‘Pee Wee’. When researching for ‘The King’s Daughter’, Martel read widely about the orphans who were shipped to New France in the seventeenth century to become the wives of settlers. When writing ‘Pee Wee’, she talked to a nephew about his peewee hockey experiences and attended the finals of a tournament in Quebec City.

Quotations: "What is important to me while I’m writing is that I’ve had a wonderful time. Anything creative should be like that."

"This is why it is so exciting to be a writer. You get to live hundreds of lives besides your own. The life in your head is just as important and real as the one outside."

Personality

Although Suzanne Martel spoke English fluently, she wrote only in French.

An avid traveler, she visited India, where she lived through some of the adventures of one of her adult characters, such as riding elephants and camels and stalking tigers, trekked in the Himalayas.

Five volumes of Martel memoirs were issued for the family and close friends.

Connections

Suzanne Martel met her future husband, a corporate lawyer Maurice Martel, at a party when she was eighteen. She had accepted the invitation only at the urging of her mother, who was concerned that her daughter wasn’t socializing enough and promised her five dollars if she would attend.

The family produced six children named Paul, Bernard, Luc, Éric, Alain-Anadi, and Yves.

Father:

Francis Xavier Chouinard

Mother:

Lady Couillard

Sister:

Minique Corriveau

husband:

Maurice Martel

Son:

Paul Martel

Son:

Bernard Martel

Son:

Luc Martel

Son:

Eric Martel

Son:

Alain-Anadi Martel

Son:

Yves Martel

References

• Canadian Children's Books: A Critical Guide to Authors and Illustrators This book provides teachers, librarians, and other educators, parents and relatives, and students with a comprehensive and detailed examination of Canadian children's books
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