Sliter, Dorothy Murray

Person

Sliter, Dorothy Murray

1905-1997

Dorothy Browning Murray Sliter (1905-1997) was born and raised in Kingston. She was the youngest child of David Murray and Lottie Maxwell and she claimed descent from the British poet Robert Browning. Part of her childhood was spent in the family home now know as the "Grey House" which is a part of the Queen's Campus. The house was designed by her father who trained as an architect but ended up managing his father's vinegar factory. A great Uncle, John Clark Murray, was the head of Queen's Philosophy Department in the early 1870's. Dorothy, herself, graduated from Kingston Collegiate Vocational Institute and attended Queen's for a short time.

When she was thirteen, Dorothy Murray first encountered Ernest Sliter a badly wounded First World War Veteran. They met officially when she was seventeen and married when she was twenty one.

Sliter suffered all his life from his war wounds and consequently was forced to live on a very inadequate pension. Since Dorothy was herself not strong and very nervous and thus unable to take employment they lived in some poverty throughout the rest of their lives. To save money, they moved to the country. For ten years the Sliter's lived at Abbey Dawn as tenants of the poet Wallace Havelock Robb. Later they moved to Verona where they could be nearer to a doctor.

Dorothy had been a writer all of her life. In her youth she wrote some twenty novels which she destroyed before she married as she considered them to be immature. In later years she consorted with poets, especially through Robb and his "Abbey Dawn Poet's Festivals" which attracted the likes of Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, Wilson MacDonald, Charles Andrew Tupper and Nathaniel Benson. Sliter brought her own poetry to these gatherings but she was far too nervous to read it herself so her husband Ernie did her readings for her.

Over the years Dorothy Sliter published a number of books of poetry including, "Meadow Long Day" (1939); "High Wind" (1944); "Father Lucas and Other Poems" (1971). As well as poetry she published " The Friendly Village" (1967), an anecdotal history of Verona and her "Memoirs" (1980).

Ernie Sliter died in 1976 and Dorothy lived on in Verona, battling failing eyesight and poor health until just before her death in 1997. She is survived by two nieces and three nephews: Murray Dell, Jeffrey Dell and Barbara Dell MacGowan of Niagara Falls area; Dr. John D. Murray of Toronto and Shirley Hodgins Brind of Geneva, New York.

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• Englisch