Barry Broadfoot

Book cover photo from Armstrong Stamps

Instead of describing his characters, Barry Broadfoot used dialogue to reveal them directly. But his work was non-fiction and his characters were real people. His metier was like oral story telling, except that the stories he collected were written down.

Arguably his most famous work is Ten Lost Years: Stories of Canadians who Survived the Depression (1973). This collection of individual stories of struggle and hope showed the Hungry Thirties directly through the eyes of those who experienced that era directly.

By the time Broadfoot died at age 77 in Nanaimo in 2004, this book had sold 200,000 copies in multiple editions. The play based on it ran for months in Toronto and elsewhere, and then toured Europe and made a hit at the Edinburgh Festival. CBC adapted it for television.

Another well-known work is Six War Years, 1939-1945: Memories of Canadians at Home and Abroad (1976). Broadfoot produced other books in the same genre: The Pioneer Years, The Veterans' Years, Next Year Country, and The Immigrant Years. In 1977 he published Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame, a book about the internment of Japanese Canadians in World War II. This was before Joy Kogawa's Obasan, which came out in 1981.

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Barry Broadfoot attended the University of Manitoba and began his career as a journalist at the Winnipeg Tribune. He worked for nearly two decades at The Vancouver Sun.

One day he quit his job and went on the road, collecting stories. He produced seventeen books in all, and was published by Douglas Gibson, who published many famous authors and has recently published a book himself. For his opus, he was awarded The Order of Canada, as well as a B.C. Lifetime Achievement Award and an Honorary degree from the University of Manitoba.

He died February 1, 2004 and was remembered in The Star by Judy Stoffman on March 1.