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The recent acquisition of the files of Townships writer Bernard Epps is a significant addition to the archival holdings of the Eastern Townships Research Centre at Bishop's University. The ETRC will now have the papers of an important local English-language writer, much of whose work has been devoted to an exploration of local history and legend. In seeking out and obtaining the Epps papers, the ETRC has indicated its wish to make the archives a resource for literary as well as historical and sociological research on the Townships region.
Epps was born in 1936 in Whitstable, Kent, England. In 1950, he immigrated to the United States with his parents and then settled in the Eastern Townships in the mid-1960s. Gradually, he turned to writing full-time and abandoned his contract work as an electronic draftsman. His works include fiction inspired by his knowledge of the Townships and historic studies of the region: Pilgarlic the Death (Toronto: Macmillan, 1967; rpt. Dunvegan, ON: Quadrant, 1980), The Outlaw of Megantic (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1973; rpt. 1988), Tales of the Townships (Lennoxville, QC: Sun Books, 1980), More Tales of the Townships (Lennoxville, QC: Sun Books, 1985), and most recently, The Eastern Townships Adventure, Volume I (Ayer's Cliff, QC: Pigwidgeon, 1992). Epps has also published poems and articles in numerous newspapers and periodicals. In the 1970s, he was editor of the Townships Sun. During the 1980s, he supplied a weekly column to the Sherbrooke Record; currently he does the same for the Stanstead Journal.
The entry on Bernard Epps in the Dictionary of Literary Biography says of him, "Epps is an accomplished storyteller who handles language and narrative with skill. His interest in myth, legend, parable and documentary as well as his acute awareness of history and place reveal his affinity with much of the best contemporary Canadian fiction."
For many years, the Eastern Townships has been the principal English literary community off the island of Montreal, due no doubt to the presence of Universite de Sherbrooke, Bishop's University, and Champlain College, which provided jobs for several of the writers. Unlike his academic colleagues, however, Bernard Epps was attracted to the Townships because his father's farm at Gould Station became available to him. He and his wife Susan were...