Welcome to the Strange Family Website

Discover the lives and stories of Kathleen and Henry Strange

Meet the folks who's adventures will inspire and fascinate you. This website is primarily an archive of the lives of Kathleen and Henry Strange, the books they wrote and about their escapades.

Kathleen Strange

Writer

(1896-1968)

Born in London, England, she came to North America with her husband, Henry George Latimer Strange, after World War One, travelling around the West until settling in Winnipeg in 1930. She told the story of these years in her book With the West in Her Eyes: The Story of a Modern Pioneer (1937). In Winnipeg she served as president of the Canadian Authors Association for many years, and later became national bursar. She also continued her writing, producing with her husband Never a Dull Moment (1941), another memoir of family adventures. Moving to England in 1954, she became involved with the movie industry in Europe, producing several screenplays. She retired to Vancouver in 1964, where she died.

Henry (Harry) Strange

Engineer, agricultural researcher, farmer, writer.

(1882-1964)

Born in London, England, he studied engineering, served in the Boer War, and worked as a gas-processing engineer around the world. During World War One he worked in a special section of the Royal Engineers developing flame projectors. In 1918 he was badly wounded by shrapnel. He moved to North America in 1919, and worked for some years in agricultural research before joining the Searle Grain Company of Winnipeg in 1930 to head its research department. He developed a new crop-testing system which was adopted around the world. Throughout his career he wrote on agriculture and other areas of interest, often in collaboration with his wife Kathleen. Strange was the author of A Short History of Prairie Agriculture (1951). He retired in 1954, first to England then to British Columbia. He died in Vancouver. A partial biography is provided in With the West in Her Eyes (1937) and a partial autobiography by Never a Dull Moment (written with Kathleen Strange, 1941).

To the Stranges, human beings are unpredictable, fascinating actors who dance, cavort, study, sing or speak, playing sometimes dramatic, often humorous roles before the infinitely varied, rapidly changing scenes that form the background of life’s vast stage.

Book now available!

With the West in Her Eyes
The story of a modern pioneer

KATHLEEN STRANGE, whose manuscript won the $1,000 prize in a Canadian Book Contest with work from all over Canada, was born in London. During the War she served in the Secretariat of the Admiralty, and later with the Ministry of Munitions, where she met the man whom she married, and who plays a central part in this book. 


While en route to Hawaii in 1919 Major Strange fell ill, and on the doctor’s advice they turned to Canada and life on a farm. Starting without experience the Stranges developed a great seed business, and have since been leading figures in Canadian agriculture. 


WITH THE WEST IN HER EYES graphically describes their struggle from rock bottom to the eminence they now enjoy.


Republished with new cover art by grandson, Adam Strange

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Book now available!

NEVER A DULL MOMENT
By Harry and Kathleen Strange

Kathleen Strange, with her recognized flair for vivid description and swift, almost racy style, has in this book written the life story of one who must be to her the most important actor on her own particular stage. It is her husband’s story as he gave it to her, and the combined task must have afforded them both amusement and intense pleasure, for it is the story of a life filled with an extraordinary variety of wide experience.


His experiences as a Scout in the Boer War, gold mining in the Klondike, engineering in the Hawaiian Islands, life in Paris, London, Honolulu and in the home of Jack London, are all described vividly. In a word, from his school days in France, through active service in the first Great War, working with the Royal Air Force and later, agricultural work in Western Canada, to his final moving appeal for world peace, this is a stimulating and at times highly exciting biography which may readily claim all that the title suggests.


Republished with new cover art by grandson, Adam Strange

Contact to Purchase