Canadian author Gail Bowen, best known for her long-running mystery and crime novel series centered on a character named Joanne Kilbourn, died June 25, CBC News reported. She was 83. Bowen was born in Toronto and eventually moved to Regina, Sask., where she became an English professor at the First Nations University of Canada before retiring from teaching.
Kelley Jo Burke, who knew Bowen for more than 25 years as a neighbor, friend, and later professionally, producing several of her pieces for radio, said most people were familiar with Bowen because of the world she created in her novels, which were set in Saskatchewan: "She was Canada's national treasure and one of the most successful mystery writers in the country.... She traveled around the country promoting her books and was the most rigorous, relentless writer that you have ever seen.... Gail's work ethic was unbelievable. She got up at 5, she did yoga, she did rewrites, then she had breakfast, and she did it every day."
Burke described Bowen's works as cozy mystery novels that are also about being a woman who is a mother, a lover, a friend, and involved in the lives of children. Writing them was about making that kind of person important, Burke told CBC News.
Anthony Bidulka, a crime novelist and friend, said Bowen's works inspired him to be an author: "She became my mentor, she became my friend and she became my colleague... You know she's a master at storytelling and writing, but more than that, when you read a Gail Bowen book, you know who she is. You know what's important to her.... She was someone who's a champion of equality for all, and justice. She was a supporter of diversity. She was someone who really cared deeply about her community, about her city, about her province, about her country. Probably above all, though, she was someone who cared deeply about family."
In her last interview with CBC's Saskatchewan Weekend last November, Bowen said: "I mean, it's been over 35 years and some of the readers say to me, you know, 'They're like friends to me.' I think I could write another one now because I'm so excited about it, but I mean, I did say it was [the last]. The other thing too is you have to accept the fact that we are all human and that means that we don't live forever."
The final Joanne Kilbourn novel, Homecoming, will be published posthumously. Her son, Nathaniel Bowen, said, "It does end with Joanne's very strong feelings about extended family, that you bring people into your life, you don't exclude them. If there was a message there, that would be it because we do, I think, only connect. We do need each other."