author
A. Paul Gardiner
Best known for The House of Cariboo and Other Tales from Arcadia, this Canadian-born writer drew on late-19th-century life in Glengarry and beyond to tell sturdy, old-fashioned stories of family, hardship, and adventure.
1 Audiobook
The House of Cariboo, and Other Tales from Arcadia
by A. Paul Gardiner
About the author
Born in Dundee Township, Huntingdon County, Quebec, on January 11, 1865, Alfred Paul Gardiner was a businessman and author who also published as A. Paul Gardiner and A. P. Gardiner. A biographical entry from the Glengarry Historical Society says he studied at the Franklin Institute in New York and moved to New York City around 1885, where he worked in the dry-goods trade before running his own business.
His books include A Drummer's Parlor Stories (1898), Vacation Incidents (1899), and The House of Cariboo and Other Tales from Arcadia (1900). The University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Page lists these works, and The House of Cariboo remains the title most closely associated with him today.
Gardiner died on June 30, 1934. Reliable biographical information about him is fairly scarce, but the surviving record suggests a writer with roots in Quebec and Glengarry whose fiction preserved a slice of Canadian life at the turn of the century.