Merrill Denison was a Canadian playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

.

Born in Detroit and raised in Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Denison's mother was American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 (though described as a United Empire Loyalist), and his father was of American Revolutionary stock.

In 1921, after pursuing studies in architecture, he became Art Director of Hart House Theatre

Hart House Theatre

Hart House Theatre is a 454-seat theatre in Toronto, Ontario located on the campus of the University of Toronto in the Hart House Student Centre. Hart House Theatre has been the University of Toronto Performing Arts Leader Since 1919....

, Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

. In 1926 he married Jessie Muriel Goggin

Muriel Denison

Muriel Denison, née Jessie Muriel Goggin , was a Canadian writer.Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she was educated at Havergal College, Edgehill School, and the Royal Conservatory of Music...

. Denison soon began to write comedies, some of which were conceived at his summer home in Bon Echo

Bon Echo Provincial Park

Bon Echo Provincial Park is a provincial park in South Central Ontario north of Kaladar, Ontario, approximately 6 km north of Cloyne.Bon Echo features several lakes, including part of Mazinaw Lake, the second-deepest lake in Ontario...

 and performed in the Tweed Playhouse in Tweed

Tweed, Ontario

Tweed is a municipality and a village located in central-eastern Ontario, Canada, in Hastings County.The Municipality of Tweed is an amalgamated municipality comprising the former Village of Tweed and the former Townships of Hungerford and Elzevir & Grimsthorpe...

, Ontario. As author of The Romance of Canada, a highly successful series of historical plays broadcast in 1931 and 1932, he received wide acclaim as a pioneer in radio drama

Radio drama

Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...

. During the decades that followed he devoted his energies to this field, preparing numerous plays for broadcast in the United States.

Increasingly interested in business history, during the 1950s and 60s Denison wrote several popular histories of Canadian corporations, including Harvest Triumphant: The Story of Massey-Harris.

Plays

• The Unheroic North: Four Canadian Plays (1923)
  • Brothers in Arms, the Weather Breeder, From Their Own Place, and Marsh Hay.
• Henry Hudson and other plays: Six Plays for the Microphone (1931) from the 'Romance of Canada' series of radio broadcasts
• The Raid on Grand Pre (1931) from the 'Romance of Canada' series of radio broadcasts
• America in action: twelve one-act plays for young people, dealing with freedom and democracy. (1941)
  • The U.S. vs. Susan B. Anthony, and Haven of the Spirit.

Books and papers

• The educational program (1935) - a discussion of facts and techniques in educational broadcasting
• An American father talks to his son (1939)
• Klondike Mike: An Alaskan Odyssey (1943)
• Prodigy at sixty (1943)
• Canada, our dominion neighbor (1944)
• Harvest Triumphant: the Story of Massey-Harris (1949)
• Bristles and brushes: A footnote to the story of American war production (1949)
• The Barley and the Stream: the Molson story (1955)
• The power to go: the Story of the Automotive Industry (1956)
• The People's Power: the History of Ontario Hydro (1960)
• Canada's first bank: A History of the Bank of Montreal (1966-67) (in two volumes)

External links

• Denison's profile at Athabasca University
  Athabasca University
  Athabasca University is a Canadian university in Athabasca, Alberta. It is an accredited research institution which also offers distance education courses and programs. Courses are offered primarily in English with some French offerings. Each year, 32,000 students attend the university. It offers...
  
  's Canadian Theatre Encyclopaedia
• Merrill Denison entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia