Patricia Blondal: A Life Cut Too Short

Patricia Blondal was a Canadian author, who was best known for her fiction novel, titled ‘A Candle to Light the Sun’. She died early, at age thirty-two, and was unfortunately only able to publish a few works during her lifetime.

Patricia Jenkins was born on December 12th, 1926, in Souris, Manitoba. She was the youngest of five children, as she had two sisters (Esther, and Nora), and two brothers (David, and Walter). Patricia’s parents were Pearl Work (from Gray County, Ontario), and railroad engineer Nathaniel Jenkins (from Warwickshire, Ontario). Patricia and her family moved to Winnipeg in 1936.

From a very young age, Patricia had been extremely interested in poetry, and writing fiction. She was an avid reader, and was deeply interested in the magic of being able to write about characters and settings, and being able to project these images from the page into her readers’ minds. Patricia decided to study literature at the University of Manitoba, and she was classmates with a great deal of talented authors — including Adele Wiseman, and Margaret Laurence.

On July 4th 1946, Patricia married Harold Blondal. He was a physician, and an engineer, who would later go on to be a cancer researcher. Patricia was still in school when they had gotten married. She graduated in 1947, with a Bachelor of Arts.

Once she graduated, Patricia continued writing poetry, as well as fiction. For some time, she had been working on a novel, titled ‘Brass Tower’, though she never published it…