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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #63166 Medium E. Pauline Johnson: poet, performer and a divided reputation

Read the following passage.

A. Emily Pauline Johnson was born on March 10, 1861, at Chiefswood, a house her father had built on the Six Nations Reserve. Her father, George Henry Martin Johnson, was a Mohawk of the Wolf Clan, and her mother, Emily Howells, was English. Johnson was taught largely at home. She spent two years at the reserve school and then went to Brantford Collegiate Institute between the ages of 14 and 16. At 23, she began to look to writing as a way to support herself. From 1886 she signed her work with both her English name and Tekahionwake, the Mohawk name of her great-grandfather.

B. In January 1892, she read her poems at an evening event held by the Young Men's Liberal Club in Toronto. The audience was thrilled by her dramatic recitations, especially of 'A Cry from an Indian Wife'. That success led to about 125 performances in 50 towns and villages across Ontario from October 1892 to May 1893. Late in 1892 she began to wear the costume she became known for: Indigenous dress for the first half of a program and a drawing-room gown for the second.

C. For the next 17 years, Johnson made her living mainly on the road. With stage partners Owen Smily and later Walter McRaye, she travelled across Canada from coast to coast and into parts of the United States. In 1894 she performed in London, England, and while there she found a publisher for her first book of poems, The White Wampum. Her second collection, Canadian Born, appeared in 1903, but it was less successful than the first. She also wrote stories and essays for magazines such as Mother's Magazine and Boys' World. On another visit to London in 1906, she met the Squamish chief Joseph Capilano.

D. In 1909, tired and already ill with breast cancer, Johnson ended her last stage partnership and moved to Vancouver. Friends helped her to complete Legends of Vancouver, which retold stories she had heard from Capilano, and Flint and Feather, a collected edition of her poems. She died in Vancouver on March 7, 1913. Chiefswood, her childhood home, is now a national historic site and a museum. Opinion of her work remains divided: she objected to the stereotyping of Indigenous people, yet some of her writing seemed to accept assimilation. Some people at Six Nations also point out that the leather, beadwork and feathers she wore on stage were not specific to Haudenosaunee culture.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

- 1.
Money earned from her first poetry book paid for her tours around Canada.

- 2.
The book of poems she published in 1903 did not do as well as her earlier one.

- 3.
Most of her early education took place at home rather than in a school.

- 4.
Her father encouraged her to become a writer when she was a young woman.

- 5.
While she was sick, other people helped her finish some of her books.

- 6.
One well-received evening in Toronto led to more than a hundred shows throughout Ontario.

- 7.
Along with her English name, she used one that had first belonged to an ancestor.

- 8.
During each show she changed her clothing halfway through.

- 9.
The house where she grew up can now be visited as a museum.

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