A Romany Of The Snows

Gilbert Parker was a Canadian writer and politician who taught at the Ontario School for the Deaf and Dumb and Trinity College. After travels through Australia, the Pacific, the South Sea Islands, Europe, Egypt, and Asia, he settled in London, England, where he later became involved in politics and was elected to Parliament.

In London, he wrote a number of romantic novels, largely concerned with French Canadian history and culture. He said "That I understood Canada could not be established by the fact that I had spent my boyhood there, but only by the fact that some inner vision permitted me to see it as it really was."

"A Romany of the Snows" is the second volume of stories featuring "Pretty Pierre," a half-breed French-Canadian gambler, and the world he lives in and the people he knows. It forms a sequel of sorts to "An Adventurer of the North," the first volume of stories about Pierre. In total, Parker wrote thirty-nine stories about Peirre and His People. They were widely anthologized, and several had stage productions, including "Pierre of the Plains." Parker said "Pierre was the pioneer of the Far North in fiction; that much may be said; and for the rest, Time is the test, and Time will have its way with me as the rest."