by Jean Little
This story is dedicated to Sandra Bogart Johnston, the editor of the Dear Canada books, who talked me into writing one and took me safely through the process — even making it fun — with much love from Victoria, Eliza, Fee and me.
I would like to thank the staff at the Guelph Public Library, Barbara Hehner, and Dr. Heather MacDougall of the University of Waterloo, who checked my facts and answered my questions and helped me find out all the things I needed to know to write this book. Without you, I would have been lost indeed. I would also like to thank my mother, Gorrie Gauld, for keeping a diary during her first year in medical school in 1918. They all helped and inspired me. All the glaring errors remaining are my own.
About the Author
Jean Little draws memories, family tales and anecdotes from every imaginable source to create her heartwarming stories. Her mother, Gorrie Gauld, was a sixteen-year-old medical student in 1918, so Jean was able to sift through Gorrie’s diaries from 1918–1919 in writing the story of the Macgregor family. Jean’s younger brother’s bout with pneumonia in 1940 also made its way into this book — she recalls complaining about Hugh’s loud “snoring,” only to have her parents discover that he had pneumonia!
The lively card game of Pounce is a Little family favourite, and Jean weaves in bits from her own schoolgirl days at Toronto’s Jesse Ketchum Public School, which she attended after coming to Canada with her medical missionary parents in 1939.
One of Jean’s close friends, Loa Reuber, lost her mother to the Spanish Flu. On her third birthday, Loa was not having a birthday party, but attending her mother’s funeral: “Her brothers and sisters stayed with their father after her mother’s death,” Jean says, “but, because she was just three, Loa was sent to live with her grandparents. She was given a doll on that birthday, one that her mother had dressed for her; but although Loa took great care of the doll, she never felt comfortable playing with it.”
Jean makes many visits to schools to talk about her books. Legally blind since birth, she is always accompanied by her guide dog, Honey, who came to Jean in 2006 after her previous guide dog, Pippa, retired.
Orphan at My Door, Jean Little’s first book in the Dear Canada series, won the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award in 2002. Brothers Far from Home is a CLA Honour Book. Exiles from the War is a Geoffrey Bilson Award finalist and Red Cedar nominee. If I Die Before I Wake was shortlisted for the B.C. Red Cedar Award and named a ResourceLinks Best of the Year.
Jean has written fifty books, including novels, picture books, a book of short stories, poetry and two autobiographies — Stars Come Out Within and Little by Little. Books such as Pippin the Christmas Pig, Mama’s Going to Buy You a Mockingbird, Listen for the Singing, Mine for Keeps, From Anna, His Banner Over Me, Willow and Twig and Hey World, Here I Am! have won many awards, including the Ruth Schwartz Award, the Canada Council Children’s Literature Prize, the Violet Downey Award, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book Award, the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, the UK Younger Fiction Book of the Year, and the Little, Brown Canadian Children’s Book Award. Jean received the Vicky Metcalf Award in 1974 for her Body of Work. She is a member of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. Her newest picture book, with illustrator Geneviève Côté, is Wishes.
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Fiona Macgregor is a fictional character created by the author, and her diary is a work of fiction.
Copyright © 2007 by Jean Little.
Published by Scholastic Canada Ltd.
SCHOLASTIC and DEAR CANADA and logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan–American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read this e-book on-screen. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Scholastic Canada Ltd., 604 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1E1, Canada.
ISBN: 978-1-4431-2402-7
First eBook edition: September 2012
Also Available
To read about Fiona Macgregor’s Christmas and meet other Dear Canada heroines check out
Books in the Dear Canada Series
Alone in an Untamed Land, The Filles du Roi Diary of Hélène St. Onge by Maxine Trottier
Banished from Our Home, The Acadian Diary of Angélique Richard by Sharon Stewart
Blood Upon Our Land, The North West Resistance Diary of Josephine Bouvier by Maxine Trottier
Brothers Far from Home, The World War I Diary of Eliza Bates by Jean Little
A Christmas to Remember, Tales of Comfort and Joy
Days of Toil and Tears, The Child Labour Diary of Flora Rutherford by Sarah Ellis
The Death of My Country, The Plains of Abraham Diary of Geneviève Aubuchon by Maxine Trottier
A Desperate Road to Freedom, The Underground Railroad Diary of Julia May Jackson by Karleen Bradford
Exiles from the War, The War Guests Diary of Charlotte Mary Twiss by Jean Little
Footsteps in the Snow, The Red River Diary of Isobel Scott by Carol Matas
Hoping for Home, Stories of Arrival
No Safe Harbour, The Halifax Explosion Diary of Charlotte Blackburn by Julie Lawson
Not a Nickel to Spare, The Great Depression Diary of Sally Cohen by Perry Nodelman
An Ocean Apart, The Gold Mountain Diary of Chin Mei-ling by Gillian Chan
Orphan at My Door, The Home Child Diary of Victoria Cope by Jean Little
A Prairie as Wide as the Sea, The Immigrant Diary of Ivy Weatherall by Sarah Ellis
Prisoners in the Promised Land, The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
A Rebel’s Daughter, The 1837 Rebellion Diary of Arabella Stevenson by Janet Lunn
A Ribbon of Shining Steel, The Railway Diary of Kate Cameron by Julie Lawson
A Sea of Sorrows, The Typhus Epidemic Diary of Johanna Leary by Norah McClintock
A Season for Miracles, Twelve Tales of Christmas
That Fatal Night, The Titanic Diary of Dorothy Wilton by Sarah Ellis
To Stand On My Own, The Polio Epidemic Diary of Noreen Robertson by Barbara Haworth-Attard
Torn Apart, The Internment Diary of Mary Kobayashi by Susan Aihoshi
A Trail of Broken Dreams, The Gold Rush Diary of Harriet Palmer by Barbara Haworth-Attard
Turned Away, The World War II Diary of Devorah Bernstein by Carol Matas
Where the River Takes Me, The Hudson’s Bay Company Diary of Jenna Sinclair by Julie Lawson
Whispers of War, The War of 1812 Diary of Susanna Merritt by Kit Pearson
Winter of Peril, The Newfoundland Diary of Sophie Loveridge by Jan Andrews
With Nothing But Our Courage, The Loyalist Diary of Mary MacDonald by Karleen Bradford
Go to www.scholastic.ca/dearcanada for information on the Dear Canada Series — see inside the books, read an excerpt or a review, post a review, and more.