Evah May McKowan (February 6, 1885 – February 22, 1962) was a Canadian writer.
Early life Evah May Cartwright was born at Carlisle, Ontario, the daughter of George Cartwright and Clara Cartwright. As a teen she moved west with her parents and three younger sisters, and lived much of her adulthood in Cranbrook, British Columbia.Mike Selby, "Cranbrook's Evah McKowan: 'Janet of Kootenay'" Cranbrook Daily Townsman (November 28, 2014). She remembered skiing with her students when she was a teacher in 1903. Cartwright said that she and her sister were the first girls in the area of Kimberley, British Columbia to ski.Chic Scott, Powder Pioneers: Ski Stories from the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains (Rocky Mountain Books 2005): 114.
Career McKowan published two novels. Janet of Kootenay (1919)Evah McKowan, Janet of Kootenay: Life, Love and Laughter in an Arcady of the West (George H. Doran Company 1919). is about a young single woman who buys and runs a farm named "Arcadia" in British Columbia, told in a series of letters to her friend back east.Florian Freitag, The Farm Novel in North America: Genre and Nation in the United States, English Canada, and French Canada, 1845-1945 (Boydell and Brewer 2013): 154-155. Janet Kirk, the title character, eventually marries a disabled veteran of World War I, making the book a "surprisingly progressive" and timely romance in its day.Amy Tector, "'Mother, Lover, Nurse': The Reassertion of Conventional Gender Norms in Fictional Representations of Disability in Canadian Novels of the First World War" in Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw, eds., A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the First World War (UBC Press 2012): 308-310. McKowan's second book, Graydon of the Windermere (1920)Evah McKowan, Graydon of the Windermere (George H. Doran Company 1920). is a "bright breezy story of adventure and love","Evah McKowan" Winnipeg Tribune (November 19, 1921): 39. via Newspapers.com about a Toronto man who moves west.
She served on the British Columbia provincial committee of the Canadian Authors Association,Lyn Harrington, Syllables of Recorded Time: The Story of the Canadian Authors Association (Dundurn 1981): 51. and addressed the association's annual convention in 1937."Steam Roller Inauguration of Confederation Omitted from Canadian Histories" Winnipeg Tribune (June 29, 1937): 2. via Newspapers.com She took over as president of her husband's business, Cranbrook Sash and Door, upon his death in 1947. She sold the business in 1956.D. M. Wilson, "Lumbering in Cranbrook" The Virtual Crow's Nest Highway (February 16, 2016).
Personal life Evah Cartwright married lumberman Harry A. McKowan in 1907; they had four daughters."Eva May McKowan" in Charles Whately Parker, Barnet M. Greene, eds., Who's Who in Canada (1922): 240. She was widowed in 1947, and died in Cranbrook on February 22, 1962.
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