Dictionary of Glengarry Biography

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====== Whyte-Edgar, Clara Mary ====== 
 (1871-19 Dec. 1948), author. (Clara Whyte Edgar, Mrs Clara M. Edgar, C. M. Edgar) Born at Iroquois, Ont. Parents: Paul Whyte and his wife Elizabeth Defoe. Clara Mary was a student at the Williamstown convent in the 1880s. Otherwise, no information has come to light about her education. In her earlier years she lived at Lancaster, and she was at some period a librarian at the Lancaster Public Library. She was a Roman Catholic. She was married on 23 Jan. 1909, at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, Lancaster, to Robert Franklin Edgar, a Protestant. At this time, she was aged 38, and he was 58 (his age in the marriage record; his gravestone says he died aged 66). The marriage, late in life for both of them (though he was probably a widower), lasted only twelve days. Robert Franklin Edgar died on 3 Feb. 1909, after an operation at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal.

<tab>She came before the reading public the following year as the compiler of an anthology called //A Wreath of Canadian Song; Containing Biographical Sketches and Numerous Selections from Deceased Canadian Poets// (pp. xxiii, 284; Toronto: William Briggs, 1910). She gives her name on the title page as Mrs C. M. Whyte-Edgar, but at the end of the preface as C. M. Edgar. The dedication of the book is to the memory of her husband. She begins the preface with the statement that “It has long been a matter of regret amongst those who would foster the growth of a native literature that Canadian writers, especially writers of verse, should be so little known amongst their own people, and that much, if not all, of the earlier verse produced in the country has been allowed to fall into comparative oblivion.” Her volume has, she notes, necessarily some of the appearance of a history as well as an anthology. She dates the preface at “Lancaster, February 19th, 1910.” Her note of thanks suggests that she had good connections among the literary people of the time. She thanks first of all the well-known W. D. Lighthall, but among those thanked is John Reade, “who with characteristic generosity placed his inexhaustible fund of information on the subject in hand and his well-stored library alike at my disposal.”

<tab>Mrs Whyte-Edgar died at the Hotel Dieu Hospital, Cornwall. At the time of her death she was said to have been a Cornwall resident for 30 years. In her later years she was totally blind. It is not certain how long she was blind. She appears to have had weak eyesight from an earlier period. While blind, she liked to have visitors to the house read to her. The burial was at St. Joseph’s cemetery, Lancaster. Her obituaries in the Cornwall and Alexandria press state the surname simply as Edgar, and do not mention her book.


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<fs small>//Standard Freeholder// 20 & 22 Dec. 1948, //Glengarry News// 31 Dec. 1948 * record of her marriage (transcript made by Alex W. Fraser) * Fraser, //Gravestones//, II, 145-146, 149, 192-193, 234 (her husband) * private information, received from several persons, following an appeal for information made by the present author in the Alexandria and Cornwall press in Sept. 1989 * life (brief) in //MDict// 886 * //Charles Edgar 1772-1856… and His Descendants 1772-1998//, arranged and edited by Rhoda Ross & Alex W. Fraser (1998) 276-277
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