Born in Hamiota, Manitoba, Birdsell was the fifth of eleven children. She lived most of her early life in Morris, Manitoba, where the family moved after her father joined the army in 1943. Her father was a French-speaking Cree Métis born in Canada and her mother was a Low-German speakingMennonite who was born in Russia.[2] When Birdsell was six and a half, her sister died from leukemia, which left a four-year gap between her and her next older sister. Her loneliness led her to ponder by herself to the nearby parks and rivers allowing her imagination to go wild.[3]
In January 2007, Birdsell began a four-month term as the Carol Shields writer in residence at the University of Winnipeg.[4] In 2010, Birdsell was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada and in 2012 she was invested with Saskatchewan Order of Merit (SOM).[5]
She is a mother to three children and a grandmother to four children.
Birdsell's first book, a collections of interconnected short stories, Night Travellers(1982), is set in the imaginary Manitoba town of Agassiz, and concerns the large Lafreniere family: the teenaged sisters Betty, Lureen and Truda, their Mennonite mother Mika and their Métis father Maurice and the girls’ maternal grandparents, Oma and Opa Thiessen. Agassiz is based on the flood-prone town of Morris, on the banks of the Red River. where Birdsell spent her childhood.[6] The source for the name Agassiz is Lake Agassiz, an enormous glacial lake that around 13,000 years ago covered much of what are now Manitoba, northwestern Ontario, northern Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, and Saskatchewan.[7] Lake Agassiz is a controlling metaphor for the stories ... representing memory and ancestry". While the devastating flood that happened in Morris in 1950 "is a related image that reverberates throughout the text".[8]
Birdsell's second collection, from 1984, is a sequel collection to Night Travellers that the focuses on the Laftenierre family women from Agassiz and their women friends, though most of the stories ae set in Winnipeg. In 1987 it was republished with Night Travellers, in one volume called Agassiz Stories. An American edition, titled Agassiz: A Novel in Stories, appeared in 1991 (Minneapolis: Milkweed).
The Town That Floated Away (1997) was influenced by Birdsell's experience as a child of the 1950 flood in Morris, and narrates the adventures of young Virginia Potts after she is left behind when her town floats away. Birdsell also wrote A Prairie Boy’s Winter, a one act play for children, which was co-written and produced by Prairie Theatre Exchange, in 1986.
Birdsell's first novel, published in 1989, is "an evocative magic realist portrait of the fictional town of Agassiz",
which won the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award.[9]
Birdsell's second novel was published in 1992, and covers four decades of script-writer Amy Barber's life: from an extraordinarily hot summer in a small Manitoba town in 1950; "to the 1960s and the 1970s, when Amy marries, goes to live in the city, and begins to have reason to fear for her young son"; to the present, with Amy traveling from Toronto to Winnipeg with her young Polish, film-maker lover.[10]
Published in 2001, this is Birdsell's third novel, and it explores Birdsell's own family history. The word Russländer means "Russians" in German and her mother and maternal grandparents were Mennonite emigrants from Russia. It was published as Katya in the US.
It is the story of Katherine (Katya) Vogt, and her Mennonite family's life in Russia from the end of 1910,[11] until she, her husband, two sisters, and grandparents emigrated to Canada in 1923. Katya was born in 1902.[12]
The story begins with the family living on the prosperous Mennonite estate of Abram Suddermann in the Ukraine, where Katya's father is the overseer. They are under the protection of the Tsar whose wife is German. This is part of the Chortitza Colony, land granted to German-speaking Mennonites for colonization. Chortitza was founded in 1789 by Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonite settlers from West Prussia, and consisted of many villages. It was the first of many Mennonite settlements in the Russian Empire.
Life then becomes much harder when World War I begins and there is suspicion as to the loyalty of the Mennonites because they speak German. Life then eases when where the area is occupied by Austrian and German soldiers. However, Russia falls into chaos when they leave in 1917, with the February and October Revolutions. The Russian workers on the estate take the bloody revenge on the Mennonites. Katya's parents and her siblings, but for two sisters are brutally murdered. After years of poverty and near-starvation. Katya, her husband, sisters, and grandparents eventually emigrate to Canada in 1923, to settle in Manitoba: "Between 1923 and 1930, nearly 25,000 Mennonites fled violence that erupted in the Soviet Union".[13]
Birdsell has also written for television, theatre and radio.[15][19]
The Waiting Time. 60 minute radio drama commissioned by CBC produced in Mar. 1993.
Another View of North. 60 minute radio drama commissioned by CBC and produced in Jun. 1992.
The Town That Floated Away. 30 minute radio drama produced by Barbara Nicol, CBC, Sept. 1992. Released on CD and cassette, BMG records
Niagara Falls. A 45-minute film script as part of a trilogy, In Good Season. Produced in a 30-minute format for the CBC The Way We Are. series. West End Productions Inc.
Summer Storm. Novina Motion Pictures. 30 minute film script produced for a CBC Family Pictures series.
Falling In Love. 30 minute film script as part of a trilogy, In Good Season. West End Productions Inc.
Places Not Our Own. 60 minute drama for the mini series, Daughters of the Country. National Film Board.
