George Frederick Clarke

George Frederick Clarke (1883-1974) was a man of the St. John River valley and a true romantic. He wanted to be a writer, and a writer he became, against great odds, and created a body of work as full of adventure and romance as his own life. But he himself was as extraordinary as anything he wrote, full of contradictions: a romantic idealist who nearly left his wife and daughters for his lover and their son-a love affair that shocked and polarised his home town of Woodstock, New Brunswick,...See more

George Frederick Clarke (1883-1974) was a man of the St. John River valley and a true romantic. He wanted to be a writer, and a writer he became, against great odds, and created a body of work as full of adventure and romance as his own life. But he himself was as extraordinary as anything he wrote, full of contradictions: a romantic idealist who nearly left his wife and daughters for his lover and their son-a love affair that shocked and polarised his home town of Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada. He rose above the scandal by sheer force of character. By the 1960s he was one of the best-known men in New Brunswick, the great-hearted old man whom the poet Alden Nowlan knew and loved-and a bridge to a new era that is coming to value both the conservation of human communities and the beauty of the natural world See less