E.J. Pratt

Edwin John Pratt was born in 1882 in Western Bay, Newfoundland — arriving in Toronto the way Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye later would, as an outsider who built his entire career there. He enrolled at Victoria College, University of Toronto, in 1907, already having worked as a probationer Methodist minister in Newfoundland.

Forty-six years at Victoria College

Pratt graduated in philosophy in 1911 and completed a theology degree in 1916. Rather than entering the ministry, he joined Victoria College's staff as a psychologist, then moved into its English department in 1919, where he taught continuously until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1953 — a Victoria College association spanning 46 years.

Toronto's poet, Toronto's library

While teaching in Toronto, Pratt became, in the words of the Canadian Encyclopedia, "the foremost Canadian poet of the first half of the century," known for long narrative poems drawing on Canadian history and geography, including Brébeuf and His Brethren (1940) and Towards the Last Spike (1952), an epic about the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Pratt died in Toronto in 1964; Victoria University's main library was named the E.J. Pratt Library in his honour.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Edwin John Pratt
• University of Toronto Libraries — E.J. Pratt, Canadian Poetry Online

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