Merrill Denison


Merrill Denison was a Canadian playwright. He created many dramas which were broadcast during the early days of radio, and was the art director of Hart House Theatre, Toronto, Ontario.

Early life

Denison was born in Detroit and raised in Ontario, the son of Canadian author, dressmaker, theosophist, Whitmanite, and feminist Flora MacDonald Denison and American garment salesman Howard Denison. He studied architecture at Columbia University, then at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and finally at the University of Toronto.

Career

Instead of making a career as an architect, Denison began working as the art director of Hart House Theatre in Toronto. In 1926 he married Jessie Muriel Goggin. Denison soon began to write comedies, some of which were conceived at his summer home in what would later become Bon Echo and performed in the Tweed Playhouse in Tweed, Ontario.
The Romance of Canada, a series of historical plays written by Denison, were broadcast as radio dramas in 1931 and 1932 by CNRV. During the decades that followed he prepared many plays for broadcast in the United States.
Increasingly interested in business history, during the 1950s and 1960s Denison wrote several histories of Canadian corporations, including Harvest Triumphant: The Story of Massey-Harris and The People's Power: the History of Ontario Hydro
In 1959 Denison donated his family property to the Province of Ontario for development into Bon Echo Provincial Park.

Plays