My Theatre of Memory
A Life in Words
The memoir My Theatre of Memory: A Life in Words traces Adriana Davies’s life in Canada from her arrival in Edmonton as a a child immigrant with her mother, older sister and younger brother in the early 1950s, to the present as she deals with the challenges of Covid. Successive chapters tell not only the family’s immigration story including accounts of her school days, university in Canada and then the UK, but also the beginning of her life as a young married woman and mother in London, England. Destined for a job in academe, cutbacks in the university sector in the UK meant that she began work as a freelance researcher and writer in the area of museums and galleries. This set the tone for a rich and varied career in museums and as a historian.
Adriana A. Davies, Order of Canada, Cavaliere d’Italia and Queen’s Diamond and Platinum Jubilee Medals recipient, was born in Italy, grew up in Canada and has a doctorate from the University of London. Publications include Changing My Skin: Dark Elegies and Other Poems, From Realism to Abstraction: The Art of J. B. Taylor, The Rise and Fall of Emilio Picariello, The Frontier of Patriotism: Alberta and the First World War (co-editor and contributor) and From Sojourners to Citizens: Alberta’s Italian History.
She was shortlisted for the Bressani Prize for non-fiction for Sojourners and awards include: the Alberta Museums Association Life Time Achievement Award, Province of Alberta Centennial Medal, Global Woman of Vision Award, YWCA Woman of Distinction Award in the Arts, Inaugural Heritage Writers Reserve Award of the Edmonton Heritage Council and others.
