author

Margaret Bemister

1877–1984

A Canadian writer and educator who spent decades gathering and retelling Indigenous legends, she helped bring traditional stories from across Canada to new generations of readers. Her work is closely linked with the Prairies, where she taught school and drew on stories shared with her over many years.

1 Audiobook

Thirty Indian legends

Thirty Indian legends

by Margaret Bemister

About the author

Born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, on August 31, 1877, Margaret Bemister was a Canadian writer, journalist, and teacher. She trained at the Winnipeg Normal School and spent many years teaching on the Prairies before later retiring to Vancouver, where she died on March 3, 1984.

Bemister is best remembered for collecting and retelling traditional stories, especially in Thirty Indian Legends and later Thirty Indian Legends of Canada. Sources available here describe her as an educator who preserved and adapted legends from different Indigenous communities, including stories told to her by a chief of the Syilx First Nation.

Her books remained in circulation long after their first publication, and recordings of her work have continued to introduce her stories to modern listeners. Because the available sources are brief, some details of her life are less fully documented, but her reputation as a long-lived Prairie teacher and storyteller is clear.