''The Golden Time'' is a 1949 novel by the

Canadian author This is a list of Canadian literary figures, including poets, novelists, children's writers, essayists, and scholars. __NOTOC__ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X ...

Harold Standish Harold Edwin Standish (24 September 1919 – 15 April 1972) was a Canadian poet and novelist, best known for his 1949 novel '' The Golden Time'' and his long poem ''The Lake of Souls'' (1957). A significant Canadian modernist along with the likes o ...

. It tells the story of the McGibbon family of

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as they struggle with various troubles, including

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, domestic abuse, and their ultimate triumph as owners of a

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in the countryside near Chatham. The novel was first published by in

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in 1949, and was later reprinted in several

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editions. Like other novels of the period by such contemporaries of Standish as Morley Callaghan and

Hugh Garner Hugh Garner (February 22, 1913 – June 30, 1979) was a British-born Canadian novelist. Biography Early life Hugh Garner was born on February 22, 1913, in Batley, Yorkshire, England. He came to Canada in 1919 with his parents, and was raised in ...

, ''The Golden Time'' uses terse, straightforward prose reminiscent of

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genre. As a significant departure from realism, however, the novel uses a number of time-shift sequences to emphasize the connections between the different generations of the McGibbon family. In this sense, the novel can be regarded as a precursor to such modernist Canadian novels as Sheila Watson's '' The Double Hook'' and Hugh MacLennan's ''

The Watch That Ends the Night ''The Watch That Ends the Night'' is a novel by Canadian author and academic Hugh MacLennan. The title refers to a line in Psalm 90. It was first published in 1958 by Macmillan of Canada. Plot summary George and Catherine Stewart share not on ...

'' (both published in 1959). ''The Golden Time'' was Standish's first novel. He published just one more novel, ''Blues for Loretta'', in (1954) before giving up fiction to concentrate on

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

. In his

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of Standish, Douglas Scott quotes the legendary

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George Woodcock as saying that ''The Golden Time'' is "a work that makes one wish Standish had turned his pen to fiction more often."

References

* Scott, Douglas M. ''Harold Standish: A Life in Letters''. Toronto: Ryerson, 1970. 1949 Canadian novels Novels set in Ontario {{Canada-novel-stub