Jane Rule

Jane Rule wrote her first, best-known novel, Desert of the Heart (1964), while living here with her long-time partner Helen Sonthoff. Rule’s compassionate and unsentimental account of two women who meet and fall in love in Reno, Nevada, made her an international figure.  She produced four more books when living on West 2nd Avenue before moving to Galiano Island. “Jane and Helen presented the nearest thing to a literary salon Vancouver has ever boasted,” wrote David Watmough, Vancouver’s first out-of-the-closet gay author. “Too few know how much the literary cohesion of Vancouver owes to those two women cultural pioneers.” Their visitors included Margaret Laurence, Audrey Thomas, George Bowering, Marya Fiamengo, Stan Persky, Margaret Atwood, Robin Blaser, Margaret Hollingsworth, Phyllis Webb, Bill McConnell and George Woodcock—to name a few. Rule received both the Order of Canada and Order of B.C., and was the second recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. She played a key role in the defence of Little Sister’s bookstore in legal fights with Canada Customs over state censorship of literature.

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