John H. MacLennan; Considered Among Canada’s Finest Writers

John Hugh MacLennan, an award-winning novelist considered among Canada’s finest writers, has died at his home. He was 83.

The cause of his death Wednesday was not disclosed.

MacLennan is best known for his 1945 novel “Two Solitudes,” which became a byword for the strains between French and English-speaking Canadians, although that was not its original connotation.

The son of a Nova Scotia doctor, he studied at Dalhousie University, Oxford and Princeton. The Rhodes scholar came to Montreal in 1935 to teach classics at Lower Canada College and joined McGill University’s English department in 1951. He retired from McGill in 1981.

MacLennan stopped writing in 1984 with his last novel, “Voices in Time.” His first published novel, “Barometer Rising,” came out in 1941, followed by “The Precipice,” “The Watch That Ends the Night” and “Return of the Sphinx.”

MacLennan was awarded Canada’s Governor-General award three times for fiction and twice for nonfiction--more than any other writer.

Jack McClelland, former head of the McClelland and Stewart publishing firm in Toronto, said MacLennan was the most important novelist in Canada.

“He was a stylist. He had great depth of understanding of our country as a whole. He was, as an individual, thoughtful, with an extraordinary sense of humor and wit. He was really a lovely person.”

MacLennan is survived by his second wife, Frances, and a sister in Halifax.