Gabrielle Roy is one of Canada's most important 20th century women writers of fiction. Born in Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, a French-speaking community across the Red River from Winnipeg, Gabrielle was the youngest child in a large family. In 1929, after two years of training at the Winnipeg Normal Institute, she began a teaching career in Manitoba. Eight years later, she traveled to Europe to study dramatic art. There she began to develop her talent as a writer and wrote her first published articles. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 hastened her return to Canada where she settled in Montreal and became a free-lance journalist. For the next six years, she researched and wrote human interest stories for a living while working on a novel set in the St. Henri district of Montreal, Bonheur d'occasion /The Tin Flute. Published in 1945, Bonheur d'occasion was an enormous success. It won several literary prizes, including the Prix Famina, a prestigious award from France.