A sometime journalist, Elsie Bell Gardner was best known as the author of the popular "Maxie" series of girls' adventure novels.
Special thanks to Anita Gardner Birt for family contributions.
This author's life has been researched earlier for inclusion in the
Entry revised by Linnea McNally
Henry Bell (1871-1913) was a forensic chemist who moved his family to Trinidad when daughter Elspeth Janette Bell was five. For the next seven years or so, the family resided in a special apartment in the police barracks. When Elsie's mother, Helen, refused to follow Henry's job offer to the United States, the family moved to Edinburgh instead, There, Elsie met Hamor Gardner (1893-1948) during the First World War. The two married in 1916 and after the end of the war, immigrated to Canada with their first child. After spending some time in Newfoundland, Hamor and Elsie moved to Toronto, where they welcomed three more children, and where Hamor worked for the police department. In 1929, Elsie, her mother, and her children visited the Caribbean together; shortly after returning, her son Douglas died from heart problems.
Over the next decade, Elsie wrote her best-known work, the
An excellent public speaker, Elsie was the first woman elected to the Burlington Town Council. After living in various communities, including London, ON, the Gardners settled permanently in Toronto in 1940. After being widowed in 1948, Elsie supported herself as a bookkeeper. For a period prior to her death in 1994, she lived at a nursing home in Markham, ON.
Piano, singing
Born in 1871 in Dyke, Moray, Scotland, Henry was a chemist and a police superintendent. He and Helen Cormack (b. c1869) had five children together. He died in 1913 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Helen was born about 1869 in Banffshire, Portessie, Scotland. She and Henry Bell (1871-1913) had five children together. She died sometime after 1929.
Hamor was born in 1893 in British Harbour, NL. He fought with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in the Balkans during 1914-15, for which he was awarded a Victory Medal by the British military; he continued in service in Europe throughout the war, receiving a further military honour from the Canadian government in 1918. Subequent to the war, he was variously a lumberman, an Ontario Provincial Police inspector, and a realtor. He married Elspeth Bell (1895-1994) in 1916, and together they had four children, three of whom lived to adulthood. He died in 1948, survived by his wife and three children.
Douglas died in childhood.
Following her mother's literary interests,
Columnist,
Bookkeeper
Journalist
Wartime plant security
Lecturer
Canadian Women's Press Club (Hamilton and Toronto)