Vanderhaeghe, Guy (1951-…), is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. Vanderhaeghe has won two Governor General’s Literary Awards, which are the highest national prizes given to Canadian authors. Vanderhaeghe won the 1982 fiction award for his short-story collection Man Descending. He won the 1996 fiction award for his novel The Englishman’s Boy. This historical novel is the first book in Vanderhaeghe’s loosely related trilogy (series of three books) largely set in the western border territory of Canada and the United States. The other two novels in the trilogy are The Last Crossing (2002) and A Good Man (2011).
The Englishman’s Boy consists of two stories. One is set in Canada and Montana during the 1870’s and the other, in Hollywood in the 1920’s. Vanderhaeghe connected the stories through their relation of supposedly real stories of the West with the westerns created by the motion picture industry. The Last Crossing centers on two brothers who seek a third brother. The third brother disappeared in 1871 in the largely unsettled lands along the western part of the United States-Canadian border. A Good Man is set in Montana after the American Civil War (1861-1865). The novel combines a love story and an account of the violent conflict between Native Americans and the U.S. military.
Vanderhaeghe’s other novels include My Present Age (1985) and Homesick (1990). His short stories have been collected in The Trouble with Heroes (1983) and Things as They Are? (1992).
Guy Clarence Vanderhaeghe was born on April 5, 1951, in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan. He received a B.A. degree in 1972 and an M.A. degree in 1975 from the University of Saskatchewan. He earned a B.Ed. degree in 1978 from the University of Regina.
