Atwood’s parents were born in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s. This small province on the east coast of Canada is traditional Mi’kmaq territory, and in the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans began to settle there. Some of Atwood’s ancestors were Scottish farmers evicted during the Highland Clearances; others were French Protestants. While her parents moved away as adults, they were always fond of Nova Scotia and had a certain homesickness for it. Atwood recalls visiting her paternal grandmother as a child and taking in her traditional lifestyle, including the old-fashioned kitchen where she smoked fish. This would inform her novel Alias Grace.

As a child, Atwood’s father, Carl, became fascinated by insects and raised a caterpillar into a butterfly. This was the beginning of his calling as an entomologist. He attended the Truro normal school, where he met Atwood’s mother, Margaret Killam. She was a “tomboy” who loved sports and the outdoors. An avid horse rider and skater, she even convinced her strict doctor father to allow her to cut her hair into a bob, though she had to wait until he was in agony at the dentist to do it. Once they were married, Margaret quit her job. It was the Great Depression of the 1930s, and having two incomes in one family was regarded as selfish. While both Margaret and Carl were “country mice,” they could easily fit in and enjoy city life, switching between the attitudes and personas needed in both places. The author feels that she and her brother learned how to be this same sort of “hybrid.”

Atwood’s older brother, Harold, was born in 1936. Living in a little apartment in Montreal’s red light district, Carl and Margaret were struggling to make ends meet, and Carl pawned his fountain pen to pay the hospital bill. Shortly afterward, Carl was offered a research position in entomology at the Department of Agriculture in Ottawa. The job required the couple and Harold to move to Ottawa but spend many months in the forests of northern Quebec each year. They eagerly agreed to this new life. Atwood explains that her parents’ relationship was always an equal partnership and that her mother loved the prospect of adventure. Harold took naturally to life in the woods and as an adult became a biologist. He did, however, get into many misadventures, at one point nearly drowning in the lake after escaping his playpen. By the end of the 1930s, war broke out in Europe, and Margaret Atwood was born.

Atwood was born on November 18, 1939, making her a Scorpio with a rising sign in Gemini. She notes that the “planetary ruler” of Gemini is the Greek god Hermes, who is the “guardian and revealer of secrets” and the “ruler of communications” (20), hinting that this fits perfectly with her career as a writer. While at home in their apartment in Ottawa, Atwood’s family braced for the city’s notoriously cold winters. In one unfortunate incident, Atwood was hit in the face with a piece of ice, which she credits with making her scared of any sports involving flying balls. At other times, she and her brother would gather tin cans and throw them at a picture of Hitler; this was productive fun since families gathered tin to donate to the war effort.

During their seasons in the woods, the Atwood family lived very simply in their log cabin with no electricity, running water, or telephone. Despite these challenges, Margaret preferred it to life in the city, as there was less fuss and housework. This simple life came naturally to her parents, who believed that life could be fulfilling without a lot of material luxuries. In addition to their cabin, they had a rowboat and motorboat they could use to get across the lake to another village or to fish for trout. The family relied on some preserved food as well, but this was limited due to war rationing and their rural locale. They also maintained gardens in the spring and summer.

Their extremely rural position meant that they were able to observe a huge array of wildlife—and had to be careful about attracting bears. Their neighbors, the Smiths, also had children, who were playmates for younger Atwood and Harold. Atwood loved rabbits and remembers her favorite toy being a bunny, while Miss Snail the stuffed animal was a close second. Her father was a natural with children, and her mother encouraged Atwood and Harold to be active and creative; she was not an anxious parent. She was a gifted storyteller and told vivid bedtime stories to the children in different voices.

In 1944, the family moved to the rural town of Sault Saint Marie, Ontario, for Carl’s work. Living in a rented cabin on the edge of a great lake, Atwood and her brother continued their explorations in nature and got into mischief, like making poison using inedible berries and their own urine. She has fond memories of their shenanigans, which are reflected in her work “Making Poison” and Anna’s Pet.

The family soon moved to a large house on Pim Street, where Atwood fondly remembers their toy-filled attic and learning to read from her big brother, who had begun school. Too young for school herself, Atwood attended Ms. Pickering’s dance class instead, though she wasn’t always a very obedient student. The children had a vague sense of world events, as they heard the war updates on the radio. Their imaginary world of Bunnyland was also a war zone, with bunnies fighting foxes, but Atwood also invented Mischiefland, which had a lot of bunnies, but only a silly war.

Carl was then asked to study a different section of forest in northern Ontario called Pointe des Chênes, so the family set about creating a road and camp in their new location. Carl chopped down trees and exploded their stumps himself. While Carl managed to finish the family cabin before going off insect collecting, the food tent was raided by a bear, decimating their provisions. When the bear returned, Margaret chased it off with a broom. The children’s lives were full of both fun and danger: They picked berries and beachcombed on the lakeside. In one incident, Harold was nearly struck by lightning.

Since Atwood already knew how to read by the time she was old enough to attend school, her teachers asked her to read books to the other grade one and two students, and she greatly enjoyed this. She also began writing; her first collection of poems was called “Rhyming Cats,” which she followed with a puppet play and a story called “Annie the Ant.” She was so encouraged that she began a sequel but soon lost interest in it. After her mother died, Atwood found an old diary page of hers intentionally preserved for Atwood. It revealed that Atwood’s teacher had recommended that Atwood skip grade two but that Margaret declined out of worry for Atwood’s social development. Atwood wonders if her mother’s gesture was meant to prove to Atwood that she was an involved parent in spite of being reserved and largely hands-off.

At Pointe des Chênes, the family enjoyed their new cottage by the lake. Atwood and Harold relished the company of other scientists’ children, who were their only playmates there. They also developed their own mold lab, sneaking off their dinner scraps to see what would grow on them. Atwood remembers the strict code of silence about the children’s secret activities, like hide and seek and burying each other in the sand. When Carl decided to have a new family home built in Toronto, he drove to the city to camp out in the unfinished building and supervise it. Meanwhile, with winter approaching, Atwood stayed with her mother and brother in a motel outside Toronto, waiting for the house to be completed. The dingy motel was awful, but, Atwood insists, it’s all “material,” or life experience for her work.

Atwood and her family adjusted to their new home in Toronto, which was still unfinished. The new developments everywhere left a landscape dominated by clay mud, but she and Harold enjoyed climbing the remaining fruit trees. Her new public school included neighborhood children of all social classes. While they all learned together, boys and girls played in separate areas and entered the school through different doors. Atwood considers the huge differences in schooling now; children in her time were threatened with the strap and would get detention and write lines if they misbehaved. Overall, Atwood enjoyed school and spent her free time playing outside with her brother and the neighborhood children.

Things changed in grade four, when Atwood had Miss Langley for a teacher. Strict and miserable, this teacher inspired Miss Lumley in Cat’s Eye. Atwood fell into a group of a few girl friends, one of whom was very unhappy and had been bullied mercilessly by her older sister, though Atwood did not know this at the time. She passed on this cruelty to Atwood, enlisting the other girls to be her spies and accomplices. Claiming to be Atwood’s friend, she tortured her with mean comments and silly challenges to “improve” her. Atwood tried to avoid the girls by taking a babysitting job, but they simply found her and continued their behavior. Overwhelmed with anxiety, Atwood developed nervous habits. While her mother had some inkling of what was happening, she did not intervene, as children at that time were expected to figure out their own social relationships.

Atwood had some safe spaces left to enjoy: her Saturday children’s activities at the Royal Museum, her trips to the library where she eagerly found new books, and her Brownies group. She also got a cat, Perky, after years of begging her parents. Atwood describes the “background sadness” of learning about her mother’s pregnancy loss, an event that confused her at the time and went on to influence scenes in Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin. The following year, Atwood had a more lenient teacher. She also realized that her friends were tormenting her on purpose for their own satisfaction, not her “improvement.” She made a new friend and decided to leave the others behind. Being bullied made her less trusting of others but taught her to stand up for herself. She feels that such experiences may have turned her toward being a novelist.

In 1950, the Atwood family relocated from their Pointe des Chênes cabin to a new spot called Cedar Lake. Carl set about building yet another cabin for the family and was particularly ambitious in making it a log cabin. Atwood fondly remembers helping her father with the building process. Later, in Toronto, Atwood began grade six in a newly built school. She finally learned that she had astigmatism but loathed her new glasses, even though they did help her see.

Margaret became pregnant, and Atwood worried constantly that her mother would lose the child. The family still stayed in their rural cabin over the summer, with Atwood and Harold responsible for Margaret when Carl was away working. Atwood reflects on how reckless this was, as Margaret could have had complications with no way of receiving care. In the end, Atwood’s little sister, Ruthie, was born, a healthy but anxious infant whom Atwood helped to take care of. Sadly, her parents gave Perky away for the infant’s safety, a fact Atwood still resents. As Atwood grew closer to high school, her parents wondered if she would want to attend a private, all-girls school. Remembering her terrible experience with her girl friends, Atwood declined, fearful of an all-female environment.

Atwood began high school at Leaside, a co-ed public high school where her ninth grade class had several older students who had never passed the exams that would allow them to proceed to the next grade. Awkward and shy, Atwood kept to herself. In a strange turn of events, her former bully, Sandra, was also in her class. The two walked to school together every day, and Sandra was now kind and even vulnerable with Atwood, who still felt jaded toward her. Atwood now found herself the more dominant friend and tried to get back at Sandra by teasing her in silly ways, like claiming that she was a ghost. This was another hard year for Atwood, who discovered that she was anemic and had a heart condition. Between the inane classes and her personal issues, she felt checked out.

Atwood recalls that she was an unusual teenager in that she wasn’t concerned about fitting in. She had a quirky style and loved making her own clothes with her sewing machine. She fondly remembers being featured on a CBC show about strange pets, as she had a praying mantis. Atwood’s first boyfriend was 18 years old and worked at his family’s car shop. In hindsight, Atwood marvels that her parents allowed her to see him when she was only 14, but the culture was different then. Regardless, they soon broke up. Atwood remained a dedicated big sister to Ruthie, now a toddler, hosting her birthday parties and planning activities and decorations. Soon, she and Sandra were putting on paid puppet shows through their own small business.

Atwood recalls her second relationship and reflects on how dating culture has changed enormously since then. Not all of her English classes were useful, but she fondly remembers her grade 12 teacher, Miss Bessie Billings, who recognized her writing ability and encouraged her.