The Orillia Museum of Art & History (OMAH) is pleased to now have, The Origins of The Journals of Susanna Moodie, a collaboration between Margaret Atwood and Charles Pachter in its permanent collection. Only 100 of these hand printed limited edition books were made, and are included in museum and art gallery collections across the world.
OMAH puts a special emphasis on collecting artwork pertaining to people from or having a clear relationship to Orillia and area, and having made a significant contribution to this area and/or all of Canada.
Edition number 42 of 100 was donated to our museum in late 2023 by Hilary Brown Bierman, a Canadian journalist whose career spanned for almost four decades. She was a ground-breaking war and foreign correspondent, when women were rarely posted to volatile locations
The history of the collaboration betweenCharles Pachter and Margaret Atwood began when they met as teenage instructors at summer camp in 1961. In that same year, which was Atwood’s last year at the University of Toronto, she gifted Pachter with printmaking equipment which she had used to make posters. Pachter took a night course in silkscreen printmaking at the Ontario College of Art (now OCADU) and began to make prints.
Pachter spent years experimenting with printmaking in Toronto until in 1968, Atwood sent him a typed manuscript of The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Charles said that he was, “so stunned by its beauty and power that I realised everything I had done up until now must be a rehearsal for this.”
Printing of The Journals of Susanna Moodie began in February 1980, and continued until October of that year. In the end, over 13,000 separate printed impressions were made by hand. All pages required hand folding and scoring before being collated together in their proper sequence and encased in handmade calfskin suede boxes.
Charles Pachter told OMAH’s Arts Programming Coordinator, Tanya Cunnington, that The Journals of Susanna Moodie is nothing if not my homage to [Margaret Atwood] the writer, poet and friend whose genius has been a sustained source of inspiration for my imagination.
Every Wednesday morning, OMAH staff will carefully turn the page of this book, which is on display in the museum lobby. The new page will be shared on the same day on the museum’s social media. There are 30 pages in total, which means that The Journals of Susanna Moodie will be on display until mid-September.
 is pleased to now have, The Origins of The Journals of Susanna Moodie, a collaboration between Margaret Atwood and Charles Pachter in its permanent collection. Only 100 of these hand printed limited edition books were made, and are included in museum and art gallery collections across the world.){kind=link}