Louise Morey Bowman, a contemporary of Ezra Pound, H. D., and Amy Lowell, was one of a community of writers who ushered in the Modernist movement. She was early recognized in Canadian and American literary circles as a gifted practitioner of free verse. Her complex and individual vision wedded to an innovative style established Bowman as a pioneer of Canadian Modernism.

Bowman was born on 17 January 1882, in Sherbrooke, Quebec, at the time a predominantly English town in the Eastern Townships. Her father, Samuel Foote Morey, was the chief inspector for the Eastern Townships Bank. Her mother was the former Lily Louise Dyer. As befitted the daughter of a well-to-do family, Louise Morey was educated by private tutors, attended Dana Hall in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and traveled across Europe. In 1909 she married a Scotsman, Archibald Abercrombie Bowman, and moved to Toronto, where her husband worked as an electrical engineer for...