Arthur Bourinot

Arthur Stanley Bourinot, SM (November 3, 1893 – January 17, 1969) was a Canadian lawyer, scholar, and poet. "His carefully researched historical and biographical books and articles on Canadian poets, such as Duncan Campbell Scott, Archibald Lampman, George Frederick Cameron, William E. Marshall and Charles Sangster, have made a valuable contribution to the field of literary criticism in Canada." He enlisted with the 77th Battalion CEF (Governor General's Foot Guards) and served overseas with the 87th Battalion (Canadian Grenadier Guards), CEF in the Canadian Army and later with Royal Flying Corps (later the Royal Air Force). He was a prisoner of war in 1917 and 1918, held in camps at Karlsruhe, Freiburg and Holzminden.

After the war, Bourinot received his legal training from Osgoode Hall Law School. He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1920. He practiced law in Ottawa until retiring in 1959.

Bourinot's verse was at first traditional with little experimentation, but by Under the Sun (1939) was showing "a new versatility in its terse rhythms and free verse, and in its frank poems about the Depression and the coming war."

Publications

Poetry Laurentian Lyrics and Other Poems. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1915. Paul Bunyan, Three Lincoln Poems, and Other Verse. Ottawa: Arthur S. Bourinot, 1961.

Prose Five Canadian poets. Montreal: Quality Press, 1954. rev. Arthur S. Bourinot, 1956. T (1955)

Edited Rhymes of the French Regime. Toronto: Nelson, 1937. The letters of Edward William Thomson to Archibald Lampman (1891– 97) (1957) At the Mermaid Inn, Conducted by A. Lampman, W. W. Campbell, Duncan C. Scott. [Essays having appeared in the Toronto Globe, 1892-93. Ottawa: Bourinot, 1958.

Except where noted, bibliographic information is courtesy the Encyclopedia of Literature.