Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Findley, Timothy
Actor/playwright/novelist, born in Toronto, Ontario, October 30,1930, died in France, June 20, 2002.
He was raised in the privileged neighbourhood of Rosedale in a family of "failed men" as he once said in interview (one brother died in childhood, another was an alcoholic, his father, too, was an alcoholic and Findley himself was an admitted alcoholic).
He began as an actor joining the original ensemble of the Stratford Festival (1953). Here, he met Alec Guinness who urged him to go to England to study. He studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama, London, England, and then was mentored by actor Ruth Gordon and Thornton Wilder and was part of the first cast, at the Edinburgh Festival, of Wilder's The Matchmaker.
He married actor Janet Reid, but the marriage was annulled. Soon after, in 1951, he met writer Bill Whitehead with whom he lived until his death.
He left acting in the 1960s.
He wrote eleven novels, including the Governor General's Award -winning The Wars (1977), Famous Last Words (1981), Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984), Headhunter (1993), The Piano Man's Daughter (1995), You Went Away (1996), Pilgrim (1999) and Spadework (2001), a comic murder-mystery set in Stratford, and alluding to the theatre people with whom he had worked and socialized.
His plays include: Can You See Me Yet? ( National Arts Centre , 1976); The Stillborn Lover (1993), The Trials of Ezra Pound (Stratford 2001) -- adapted from the radio play by Dennis Garnhum ; Elizabeth Rex (Stratford 2002, dir. Martha Henry ), for which he won a Governor General's Award; and Shadows (Stratford 2002).
He also wrote for radio and television and several of his novels have been adapted to film, television and the stage. The theatre adaptation of Not Wanted on the Voyage was performed at the National Theatre School of Canada and by Necessary Angel (directed by Richard Rose ). The Wars was adapted and directed by Dennis Garnhum for Theatre Calgary in 2007.
The protagonists in his novels and plays are typically women; his male characters are often defeated by weaknesses they do not acknowledge -- their reliance on violence, for example -- whereas the women have unrecognized strengths.
Timothy Findley was inducted into the Order of Canada in 1986. In 1998 he received the Banff Centre for the Arts National Award.
Viewings: Life and Times: Timothy Findley, CBC, 1999, directed by Diane Ngui-Yen
Among sources: "Obituary: Timothy Findley, 71", Canadian Press, June 21, 2002; "Canada Mourns Timothy Findley", CBC News web site
Last updated 2008-11-21
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