Catharine Parr Strickland Traill (1802-1899) emigrated from Great Britain to Upper Canada in 1832 with her husband Thomas Traill, a retired officer. The Blackwoods of Canada (1836), Catharine's epistolary narrative based on her experiences in the country north of Peterborough in the years immediately following her arrival in North America, is an important record of nineteenth-century pioneering and a rich personal memoir of a woman. It has become a foundation work of Canadian literature.