Crafted from archives, interviews, memories, and bankers’ boxes of papers sent to the author during the years before her death, Always Someone to Kill the Doves: A Life of Sheila Watson is the portrait of a woman shaped by her times, by her turbulent marriage, by the clarity of genius, and by the moral sense of her Catholic upbringing. With the gentle touch of an old friend, Flahiff provides a poignant insight into the woman, the westerner, and the writer. Best known for the modernist novel, The Double Hook, and her part in creating the literary magazine White Pelican, Watson’s life was as rich and complex as her finest literary creation.
F. T. Flahiff first met Sheila Watson when they were both graduate students in Marshall McLuhans graduate seminar at the University of Toronto. Toronto became Flahiffs permanent home where he taught at St. Michaels College in the University of Toronto until his retirement in 1999.