Brian Doyle (writer) - Biography

Biography

Born in Ottawa, Doyle grew up in two "homes": his family's home in the ethnically-diverse section of Ottawa where he spent the school year and a log cabin on the Gatineau River near Low, Quebec, about forty miles north of town, where he spent his summers. Doyle's memories of his parents, siblings, and neighbors as well as the landscape and atmosphere he encountered as a child greatly influenced his writing, as did his experiences raising his own three children.

Doyle grew up in a home with a rich story-telling tradition but his home life was difficult. His father was cruel when he drank and his mother, who cared for Doyle's mentally disabled older sister, Pamela, as well as for the rest of the family, was often overwhelmed. When he was in the eighth grade, Pamela, who had Down's syndrome, died; Doyle's memories of Pamela and the toll her care-taking took on his mother, has led him to include several characters with disabilities in his books.

In high school at Ottawa's Glebe Collegiate Institute, Doyle began submitting short stories to magazines, some of which came back with personal rejection letters. However, writing only occupied a small part of his teen years. Doyle played football, won medals in gymnastics, and published poetry in the yearbook; he also fought, stole, and skipped school. After graduating from Glebe Collegiate, Doyle attended Carleton University in Ottawa, where he majored in journalism and met Jackie Aronson, the woman he would later marry. Just before graduation, he won a prize for an essay he wrote on the Gatineau River Valley; right after graduation, he became a reporter for the Toronto Telegram. He soon left journalism to teach high school in Ottawa; he also completed the course work for a master's degree in literature at University of Ottawa, but left before writing his thesis.

While working as a teacher, Doyle continued his writing, working as a columnist for a local newspaper and publishing a short story in the literary magazine Fiddlehead. After he and his wife adopted two children, Megan and Ryan, and became involved in local theater, his writing took a new turn when he began writing well-received plays for his students. Doyle also became somewhat of a celebrity when one of his articles on the poor quality of teacher training was quoted in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Offered a position at his alma mater, Glebe Collegiate, Doyle became head of that school's English department and continued to write well-received student plays, including ten musicals and a satirical parody of Shakespeare's Hamlet before retiring from teaching in 1991.