David French (playwright) - Early Life

Early Life

French was born in the tiny Newfoundland outport of Coley’s Point, the middle child in a family of five boys. His father, Garfield French, was a carpenter, and during World War II worked for the Eastern Air Command in Canada. After the war, David’s mother, Edith, came to Ontario with the boys to join their father and the family settled in Toronto among a thriving community of Newfoundlandian immigrants.

French attended Rawlinson Public School, Harbord Collegiate, and Oakwood Collegiate. He was indifferent to books until Grade 8, when his English teacher, to punish him for talking in class, told French to sit down and read a book. The book David happened to pull off the shelf was Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. French says that by the time he finished reading it, he not only knew that he wanted to be a writer – he knew that he was one. Almost immediately he began to publish original stories and poems.

After high school, French trained as an actor. He spent a summer at the Pasadena Playhouse, and studied at various acting studios in Toronto. In the early 1960s, he played roles on stage and in CBC television dramas. Then he began writing for television. Over the next several years he wrote many half-hour dramas, including The Tender Branch, A Ring for Florie, Beckons the Dark River, Sparrow on a Monday Morning, and The Willow Harp. He also wrote episodes of the popular children’s program Razzle Dazzle.