Margaret G. Hanna grew up in southwestern Saskatchewan, on the farm homesteaded by her paternal grandfather in 1909. After 12 years of university, she worked as a professional archaeologist, first on several short-term contracts in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, and finally as Curator of Aboriginal History at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Regina. She retired in 2007 and moved to Airdrie AB where she lives with her husband and no pets. She now uses her research skills to explore family and prairie history.
Margaret is a member of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, Women Writing the West, Alexandria Writers’ Centre and the Airdrie Writers’ Group.
Contact me at: Margaret Hanna prairiegirl1947@gmail.com
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“Where do I belong?”
In 1912, Mary Louisa Appleton is 27 years old and a domestic servant in Cornwall, England. She sees no future there, so she accepts employment with a family returning to Alberta, Canada. It is the land of unlimited opportunity, or so she has heard.
Once in Canada, Mary faces the dilemma of all immigrants – where does she belong?
She is conflicted: her body is in Canada but her heart is in England. She longs to return to England but wars, marriage, children, the Dirty Thirties, and economic circumstances conspire to keep her in Canada.
Then Mary faces a crisis, and she has to decide where she belongs.
Searching for Home is the story of the author’s maternal grandmother and her journey to learn that home is as much a place in the heart as it is a place on the landscape
A tiny shack in a vast prairie. Spooked horses and straying bulls. A town half-destroyed by fire. The year with no crop. An untimely death.
Little did Addie Wright realize what she would face when she came west from Ontario in 1910 to marry her fiancé, Abraham Hanna. Based on entries in Abraham’s diaries, Our Bull’s Loose In Town! tells the story of the author’s grandparents as they built their farm and raised a family in the Meyronne district of southwestern Saskatchewan. Through trials and triumphs, sorrows and successes, the horrors of the Great War, the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties and the dark years of the Dirty Thirties, they found strength and courage in their faith, in their indomitable humour, and in their family and neighbours.
This is also the story of the rise and decline of a prairie village, and of the political and social turmoil of a province and country in the first half of the twentieth century, all as Addie lived it. For more about Margaret Hanna please visit her blog. margaretghanna.wordpress.com