The McLoughlin Correspondents

For nearly half a century, siblings John and Mary McLoughlin engaged in an unbroken correspondence. This exchange of heartfelt fictional letters, based upon their life histories, took place against a background of tumultuous change, and whilst they themselves were undoubtedly affected by these changes and the inevitable ravages of time, their love for and loyalty to one another remained steadfast.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, British colonial Canada and America sought to define their borders as the French lost their control of the continent, exhausted by the terror and bloodbath of the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars respectively. In this time of upheaval, the lives of the siblings diverged into two very different paths. Mary entered a convent of Ursuline Sisters in Quebec City, whilst John became active in the fur trade, a vagabond life fraught with loneliness, physical hardship and corrosive competition; the polar opposite of the cloistered life his sister led as a Bride of Christ. However, a cloistered life did not restrict Mary's sharp and eager mind; she knew only too well that for a country in the throes of a difficult birth, a certain amount of religious observance was essential for even a glimmer of much-needed political stability in the physical world her brother moved in.

Throughout the decades, each guides the other through bereavement, physical pain, and the growth of their family, and ultimately, their rise to the top of their respective fields; Mary to the role of Mother Superior and John to the "Father of Oregon", their deaths followed by the birth of two nations whose infancy they also shared.