A seminal work in the development of contemporary Canadian literature

Before the settlers arrived, the area was inhabited by Qayqayt First Nation. It is located in the Burrard Peninsula, on the north bank of the Fraser River, 19 km southeast of Vancouver. New Westminster is a town of historical importance, in British Columbia (Canada). The main feature of the New Westminster Museum and Archives is the 1865 Irving House (the oldest intact house in the BC Lower Mainland). Notable New Westminster natives include Mike Reno (musician), Renée Sarojini Saklikar (poet and writer) and writer Sheila Martin Watson.

She is best known for her modernist novel, The Double Hook, the novel that had marked the start of contemporary writing in Canada. SHEILA MARTIN WATSON, novelist, critic and teacher, was born in 1909 at New Westminster (British Columbia). Her themes are presented in a style realistic and symbolic. After studying in Vancouver, she finished her university studies at the University of British Columbia. She married Canadian poet Wilfred Watson in 1941. She wrote The Double Hook in Calgary, and revised it during a year-long stay in Paris, but was unable to find a publisher. The Double Hook was published in 1959, and instantly recognized as a modern classic.

When was published, it is often considered to be Canada’s first modernist novel due to how it departs from traditional plot, to tell a poetic tale of human suffering and redemption that is at fabular and symbolic. Its surrealism and poetic, novel’s unique form, subject matter reinvigorated literary movements in Canada. Sheila Watson’s Double Hook, is a subversive text centered around the fictional town of Nineveh (a desolate town haunted by an old woman who steals all of their fish). When she is murdered, it sparks a great moral quandary, as the manifestation of their greatest fears is revealed to breed further implications. Page after page, you can discover that this novel presents in concise terms a drama of social disintegration set in an isolated community.

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