Sue Townsend First marriage and pre-writing career Who did Sue Townsend first marry? She married Keith Townsend, a sheet metal worker at 18; the couple had three children under five by the time Townsend was 23 How long were they married? Townsend was 23 (Sean, Daniel and Victoria), at which point the marriage ended and she became a single parent. What did she do for a job during this time? While employed as a supervisor at an adventure playground, she observed a man making canoes nearby
How did this man making canoes influence her?
How did a man making canoes influence Sue Townsend?
Townsend left school at the age of 14 and worked in a variety of jobs including packer for Birds Eye, a petrol station attendant and a receptionist. Working at a petrol station allowed her the chance to read between serving customers.  She married Keith Townsend, a sheet metal worker at 18; the couple had three children under five by the time Townsend was 23 (Sean, Daniel and Victoria), at which point the marriage ended and she became a single parent. In this position, Townsend and her children endured considerable hardship. In Mr Bevan's Dream: Why Britain Needs Its Welfare State (1989), a short book in the Counterblasts series, she recounts an experience from when her eldest child was five. Because the Department of Social Security was unable to give her even 50p to tide them over, she was obliged to feed herself and her children on a tin of peas and an Oxo cube as an evening meal. Townsend would collect used Corona bottles, to redeem the 4p return fee by which to feed her children.  Aged 13, her son questioned one Sunday why they didn't go to animal parks on weekends like other families. She later recounted that it was the start of her writing which became the Adrian Mole books, looking at life through the clinical eyes of a teenager but in a comedic manner. Townsend then chose to research the world of teenagers, and started attending youth clubs as a volunteer organiser. This led to her training as a youth worker.  While employed as a supervisor at an adventure playground, she observed a man making canoes nearby and, because he was married, put off talking to him; it was a year before he asked her for a date. It was at a canoeing course she met her future second husband, Colin Broadway, who was the father of her fourth child, Elizabeth. Subsequently, she became pregnant twice more, but underwent abortions. Ultimately, Townsend came to believe that termination is wrong. Ghost Children (1997) is a novel which draws on these experiences. CANNOTANSWER
because he was married, put off talking to him; it was a year before he asked her for a date.
Susan Lillian Townsend, FRSL (née Johnstone, 2 April 194610 April 2014), was an English writer and humorist whose work encompasses novels, plays and works of journalism. She was best known for creating the character Adrian Mole.

After writing in secret from the age of 14, Townsend first became known for her plays, her signature character first appearing in a radio drama, but her work soon expanded into other forms. She enjoyed great success in the 1980s, with her Adrian Mole books selling more copies than any other work of fiction in Britain during the decade. This series, which eventually encompassed nine books, takes the form of the character's diaries. The earliest books recount the life of a teenage boy during the Thatcher years, but the sequence eventually depicts Adrian Mole in middle age.

The Queen and I (1992), another popular work which was well received, was an outlet for her republican sentiments, although the Royal Family is still rendered with sympathy. Both the earliest Adrian Mole book and The Queen and I were adapted for the stage and enjoyed successful runs in London's West End.

Townsend was poor until well into her thirties, and used her experiences of hardship in her work. In her later years she suffered ill health, in part related to the diabetes she developed in the mid-1980s, and in her last years endured serious sight and mobility problems.

Early life
Townsend was born at the Maternity Hospital in Causeway Lane, Leicester, the oldest of three sisters. Her father had worked at a factory making jet engines before becoming a postman, while her mother worked in a factory canteen. She attended Glen Hills Primary School, where the school secretary was Mrs Claricotes, a name she used for the school secretary in the Adrian Mole books.

At the age of eight, Townsend contracted mumps, and was obliged to stay at home. Her mother bought a collection of Richmal Crompton's Just William books at a jumble sale which Townsend read avidly. Later, she said the William Brown character was an influence on her best-known creation.

After failing her 11-plus exam, Townsend went to the secondary modern South Wigston High School. During her childhood, while up a tree playing with her peers, she witnessed the murder of a fellow schoolgirl, but the children were not believed. The murder was committed by Joseph Christopher Reynolds (31), convicted at Leicester Assizes for the murder of Janet Warner, and hanged by Albert Pierrepoint on 17 November 1953. It was to be the last execution carried out at Leicester Prison.

First marriage and pre-writing career
Townsend left school at the age of 14 and worked in a variety of jobs including packer for Birds Eye, a petrol station attendant and a receptionist. Working at a petrol station allowed her the chance to read between serving customers.

She married Keith Townsend, a sheet metal worker on 25 April 1964; the couple had three children under five by the time Townsend was 23 (Sean, Daniel, and Victoria). In 1971 the marriage ended and she became a single parent. In this position, Townsend and her children endured considerable hardship. In Mr Bevan's Dream: Why Britain Needs Its Welfare State (1989), a short book in the Counterblasts series, she recounts an experience from when her eldest child was five. Because the Department of Social Security was unable to give her even 50p to tide them over, she was obliged to feed herself and her children on a tin of peas and an Oxo cube as an evening meal. Townsend would collect used Corona bottles, to redeem the 4p return fee by which to feed her children.

Aged 13, her son questioned one Sunday why they didn't go to animal parks on weekends like other families. She later recounted that it was the start of her writing which became the Adrian Mole books, looking at life through the clinical eyes of a teenager but in a comedic manner. Townsend then chose to research the world of teenagers, and started attending youth clubs as a volunteer organiser. This led to her training as a youth worker.

While employed as a supervisor at an adventure playground, she observed a man making canoes nearby and, because he was married, put off talking to him; it was a year before he asked her for a date. It was at a canoeing course she met her future second husband, Colin Broadway, who was the father of her fourth child, Elizabeth.

Townsend and Broadway married on 13 June 1986.

Transition to a writing career
Townsend's new partner encouraged her to join a writers' group at the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester, in 1978, when she was in her early thirties. Initially too shy to speak, she did not write anything for six weeks, but was then given a fortnight to write a play. This became the thirty-minute drama Womberang (1979), set in the waiting room of a gynaecology department. At the Phoenix, she became the writer-in-residence.

During this time she was mentored by several theatre directors including Ian Giles and principally Sue Pomeroy who commissioned and directed a number of her plays including Womberang, Dayroom, Groping for Words and subsequently Ear, Nose and Throat. She was also introduced to William Ash, then chairman of the Soho Poly (now Soho Theatre), who likewise played a significant part in shaping her early career. She met writer-director Carole Hayman on the stairs of the Soho Poly theatre and went on to develop many theatre pieces with her for the Royal Court and Joint Stock, including Bazarre and Rummage and The Great Celestial Cow. They later co-wrote two television series, The Refuge and The Spinney.

At the time of writing the first Adrian Mole book, Townsend was living on the Eyres Monsell Estate, near the house in which playwright Joe Orton was brought up. Mole "came into my head when my eldest son said 'Why don't we go to safari parks like other families do?' That's the only real line of dialogue from my family that's in any of the Mole books. It's in because it triggered it. I remembered that kind of whiny, adolescent self-pity, that 'surely these are not my parents.'"

Success of Adrian Mole
The first two published stories appeared in a short-lived arts' journal entitled magazine, in the editing and production of which Townsend was involved, featuring the character then still called Nigel Mole. Actor Nigel Bennett had given her help and encouragement to persist with the work and sent the script to John Tydeman, the deputy head of BBC Radio Drama. The character first came to national awareness in a single radio play, The Diary of Nigel Mole, Aged 13¼, broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on New Year's Day 1982.

Someone at the publishers Methuen heard the broadcast and commissioned Townsend to write the first book, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ which came out in September of  The publisher insisted on the change of name because of the similarity to Nigel Molesworth, the schoolboy character created by Ronald Searle and Geoffrey Willans. A month after the book's appearance it had topped the best seller list and had sold a million copies after a year. Adapted as a play, the stage version premiered in Leicester and ran at Wyndham's Theatre for more than two years. The first two books were seen by many as a realistic and humorous treatment of the inner life of an adolescent boy. They also captured something of the zeitgeist of Britain during the Thatcher era.

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1984) was reputedly based on her children's experiences at Mary Linwood Comprehensive School in Leicester. Several of the teachers who appear in the book (such as Ms Fossington-Gore and Mr Dock) are based on staff who worked at the school in the early 1980s. When the book was televised, it was mostly filmed at a different school nearby. Mary Linwood Comprehensive was closed in 1997.

These first two books were adapted into a television series, broadcast in 1985 and 1987, and a video game.

Later life and career
The Queen and I (1992) is a novel imagining that the Royal family have been rehoused in a council estate after a Republican revolution, although it turns out to have been merely the monarch's nightmare. Townsend had become a republican while a child. In an interview for The Independent published in September 1992 she related that after finding the idea of God a ridiculous idea, an argument in favour of the British monarchy also collapsed. "I was frightened that people believed in it all, the whole package, and I must be the only one with these feelings. It was a moment of revelation, but at the same time it would have been wicked ever to mention it." In addition, she was "being taught about infinity, which I found mind-boggling. It made me feel we were all tiny, tiny specks: and if I was, then they – the Royal Family – were, too."

Like the first Mole book, The Queen and I was adapted for the stage with songs by Ian Dury and Mickey Gallagher. Michael Billington writes that Townsend "was ahead of the game" in treating the royal family as a suitable subject for drama. He writes: "Far from seeming like a piece of republican propaganda, the play actually made the royals endearing." A later book in a similar vein, Queen Camilla (2006), was less well received.

On 25 February 2009, Leicester City Council announced that Townsend would be given the Honorary Freedom of Leicester (where she lived). Townsend became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1993. Amongst her honours and awards, she received honorary doctorates from the University of Leicester, from Loughborough University and De Montfort University, Leicester.

In 1991 Townsend appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. Her chosen book was Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and her luxury item was a swimming pool of champagne.

Political beliefs

In 1989 Townsend published Mr Bevan's Dream – Why Britain Needs its Welfare State, one of the series of Counterblast essays written by such authors as Paul Foot, Marina Warner and Fay Weldon which critiqued, either directly or indirectly the social consequences of Thatcherism.

She describes being "mesmerized" when seeing Aneurin Bevan, the prime mover of the British welfare state on television for the first time. The book consists of a series of short anecdotal stories which touch on ways in which the welfare and education systems of the day supported or (mostly) failed ordinary citizens. In "The Quick Birth", Townsend recalls the experience of giving birth to her first child, born prematurely but who survived thanks to the dedicated National Health Service staff at her local hospital in Leicester; "Community Care" deals with the treatment of vulnerable people with mental health issues; "Mr Smith's privatised penis", the final section, is a dystopian satire on a future where pavements, sunlight, fresh air and even lovemaking have been sold off to private enterprise.

"In this pamphlet, I have fallen back on the traditional working class method for expressing ideas – the anecdote, or what is now called the "oral tradition" (which is only a fancy term for working-class people talking to each other but not bothering to record what they've heard").

Townsend, in a 2009 Guardian interview with Alex Clark, described herself as a "passionate socialist" who had no time for New Labour. "I support the memory and the history of the party and I consider that these lot are interlopers", she told Clark. Despite these comments, Townsend said in 1999 that she had only voted Labour once, and in fact her preference was "Communist, Socialist Workers, or a minority party usually." The journalist Christina Patterson observed of Townsend in 2008: "Her heart, it's clear from her books and a few hours in her company, is still with the people she left behind, the people who go largely unchronicled in literature, the people who are still her friends."

Health problems
Townsend suffered ill health for several years. She was a chain smoker, had tuberculosis (TB), peritonitis at 23 and suffered a heart attack in her 30s. She developed diabetes in the 1980s. It was a condition with which she struggled, believing herself to be the "world's worst diabetic". The condition led to Townsend's being registered blind in 2001, and she wove this theme into her work.

After suffering kidney failure, she underwent dialysis and in September 2009 she received a kidney from her elder son Sean, after a two-year wait for a donor. She also had degenerative arthritis, which left her wheelchair-bound. By this time, she was dictating to Sean, who worked as her typist. Surgery was carried out at Leicester General Hospital and Townsend spoke to the BBC about her illness on an appeal for National Kidney Day.

Death
Townsend died at her home on 10 April 2014, eight days after her 68th birthday, following a stroke. Stephen Mangan, who portrayed Adrian Mole in the 2001 television adaptation, stated that he was "greatly upset to hear that Sue Townsend has died. One of the warmest, funniest and wisest people I ever met". Townsend was survived by her husband, four children and ten grandchildren.

Awards

Works

Adrian Mole series
 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ (1982), her best-selling book, and the best-selling new British fiction book of the 1980s.
 The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1984)
 The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole (1989)
 Adrian Mole: From Minor to Major (1991) is an omnibus of the first three, and includes as a bonus the specially written Adrian Mole and the Small Amphibians.
 Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years (1993)
 Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years (1999)
 Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (2004)
 The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999–2001 (2008)
 Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years (2009)

Other novels
 Rebuilding Coventry (1988)
 The Queen and I (1992), a story about the British Royal Family living a "normal" life on an urban housing estate following a republican revolution.
 Ghost Children (1997), a novel treating the issues of bereavement, child abuse and women's self-esteem in relation to body image.
 Number Ten (2002)
 Queen Camilla (2006)
 The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (2012)

Plays
 Womberang (Soho Poly – 1979)
 The Ghost of Daniel Lambert (Leicester Haymarket Theatre, 1981) Theatre closed in January 2006
 Dayroom (Croydon Warehouse Theatre, 1981)
 Captain Christmas and the Evil Adults (Phoenix Arts Theatre, 1982) now known as the Sue Townsend Theatre
 Bazaar and Rummage (Royal Court Theatre, 1982)
 Groping for Words (Croydon Warehouse, 1983)
 The Great Celestial Cow (Royal Court Theatre and tour, 1984)
 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13-The Play (Leicester Phoenix, 1984) now known as Sue Townsend Theatre
 Ear Nose And Throat (National large scale tour Good Company Theatre Productions, 1988)
 Disneyland it Ain't (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 1989)
 Ten Tiny Fingers, Nine Tiny Toes (Library Theatre, Manchester, 1989)
 The Queen and I (Vaudeville Theatre, 1994; toured Australia in summer 1996 as The Royals Down Under)

Non-fiction
 Mr Bevan's Dream: Why Britain Needs Its Welfare State (1989)
 The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman (2001)

Footnotes

External links

 Old Biography page
 Penguin Site
 British Council Contemporary Writers Site

1946 births
2014 deaths
Blind people from England
Blind writers
British republicans
English atheists
English children's writers
English humorists
Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Kidney transplant recipients
People from Leicester
English women writers
British social commentators
20th-century English women writers
20th-century English novelists
20th-century English dramatists and playwrights
Women humorists
Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes is a free-floating canoe experience at several Disney theme parks. The oldest of the rides is located at the Disneyland park in Anaheim, California. Boarding from the park's Critter Country section, up to twenty visitors paddle a canoe around the Rivers of America, accompanied by two guides. This is the only Disneyland attraction that is powered by park visitors.

The attraction originally opened as Indian War Canoes on July 4, 1956 as part of Frontierland’s Indian Village expansion. It also operates under the name of Beaver Brother's Explorer Canoes at Tokyo Disneyland and operated at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World and at Disneyland Park in Disneyland Paris. At Shanghai Disneyland Park, the ride is simply named Explorer Canoes.

Ride Description 

At the original Disneyland version of the attraction, riders embark and disembark from a small boat dock next to the Hungry Bear restaurant in the Critter Country section of the park. Each  fiberglass canoe holds twenty guests, two per row. Each canoe has two guides dressed as frontierspeople at the bow and stern. These guides are referred to as the helmsman, bowman, and sternman.

Riders/rowers are given a short lesson on how to paddle the canoe to power the boat properly after leaving the dock. Small children are required to wear life jackets.  Life jackets are also available for adults who cannot swim in the event the boat ever capsizes. As the canoe travels  around Tom Sawyer Island, located in the center of the man-made river, the guides point out the sights along the way, such as a settler's cabin and the Indian chief on horseback. The ride's length depends upon how fast the paddlers are and how much other traffic is on the river.

Lacking tracks or a predetermined path to follow, they typically travel much faster than the large boats, like the Mark Twain Riverboat and the Sailing Ship Columbia which ride along submerged tracks and return by the last bend of Splash Mountain.  The attraction operates year-round on weekends and includes weekdays during the park's peak seasons. The canoes generally close at dusk as to prepare the Rivers of America for any night water shows such as Fantasmic!.

History
It is one of only two attractions in Disneyland to be in three different lands without ever being moved. Originally called Indian War Canoes, the attraction opened on July 4, 1956, as part of Frontierland's Indian Village expansion, with real American Indian guides aboard every canoe. Guests used a "D ticket" to ride the attraction. The Indian War Canoes closed with Indian Village in 1971 but reopened on May 19 as Davy Crockett’s Explorer Canoes, inspired by the Davy Crockett miniseries, with the guides now wearing coonskin caps.

It became a part of Bear Country, home of Country Bear Jamboree, when that section of the park opened in 1972. The area was later renamed Critter Country in 1989, which now takes in Splash Mountain and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh attractions. The canoes closed suddenly on October 3, 1998, igniting rumors that they were closed permanently. However, the attraction reopened the following June. Davy Crockett's Explorer Canoes operates on busier days only, primarily in the summer and on weekends.

In addition to the Explorer Canoes, Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom's Liberty Square operated the Mike Fink Keel Boats until 1997. This attraction was based on the miniseries episode "Davy Crockett's Keelboat Race".

On January 11, 2016, the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes, along with the other attractions and shows along the Rivers of America, temporarily closed for the construction of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. The attraction reopened on July 29, 2017.

Other parks

Walt Disney World
Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes debuted in Frontierland on opening day at Walt Disney World. A C ticket was required for guests to board the  long canoes from a dock located to the north of the Tom Sawyer Island raft launch and travel along the same path as other watercraft on the Rivers of America. The attraction closed in 1994.

Tokyo Disneyland
A canoe attraction opened in Tokyo Disneyland under the name of Davey Crockett Explorer Canoes along the Rivers of America in the theme park's Westernland. It was renamed Beaver Brothers Explorer Canoes in 1992 with the opening of Critter Country.

Disneyland Paris
An Indian Canoes canoe ride opened with Euro Disneyland on April 12, 1992. It also closed in 1994.

Shanghai Disneyland
This attraction is known as Bilge Rat Bill's Explorer Canoes. Departing from Dead Man's Landing, the canoes travel through Treasure Cove's lagoon and Adventure Isle's Q'olari River.

See also
 List of Disneyland attractions
 List of Magic Kingdom attractions

References

Footnotes

External links

 Disneyland - Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes
Tokyo Disneyland - Beaver Brothers Explorer Canoes
 Shanghai Disneyland - Explorer Canoes
 Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes at AllEarsNet.com
 Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes at MousePlanet.com
 Davy Crockett Explorer Canoe guide at YouTube.com

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts attractions
Disneyland
Tokyo Disneyland
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts gentle boat rides
Frontierland
Critter Country
Shanghai Disneyland
Amusement rides introduced in 1956
Amusement rides introduced in 1971
Amusement rides introduced in 1983
Amusement rides introduced in 1992
Amusement rides introduced in 2016
Western (genre) amusement rides
Disneyland Park (Paris)
Magic Kingdom
Davy Crockett Aboriginal dugout canoes were a significant advancement in canoe technology. Dugout canoes may have been stronger, faster, and more efficient than previous types of bark canoes. The Australian Aboriginal peoples' use of these canoes brought about many changes to both their hunting practices and society.

History
Aboriginal people began using dugout canoes from around 1640 in coastal regions of northern Australia. They were brought by Buginese fishers of sea cucumbers, known as trepangers, from Makassar in South Sulawesi.

In Arnhem Land, dugout canoes used by the local Yolngu people are called lipalipa or lippa-lippa.

Construction 

Aboriginal canoes were constructed much more easily than previous types of vessels, such as bark canoes. This ease of construction played a significant role in the dugout canoes’ widespread use. While earlier vessels required a great deal of labor and time-consuming sewing to make, dugout canoes were constructed easily and in a shorter period of time. First, one would have to cut down a tree and shape the exterior into an even form. The sides of the canoe were shaped in one of two ways. They were either carved straight up and down or in a "u" shape, curving in towards the center of the boat. Next, one would have to dig out the inner wood of the log to make space for the oarsmen to sit and paddle. In some early dugout canoes, Aboriginal people would not make the bottoms of the canoes smooth, but would instead carve "ribbing" into the vessel. Ribbing (literally sections of wood that looked like ribs) was used to stabilize bark canoes, and though not necessary to dugout canoes, was a carryover in the transition from one canoe type to the other. Both the chopping down of the tree and the digging out of the log were easily done with an iron-axe.

The wood used in the construction of dugout canoes was essential to its strength and durability. A wide variety of trees were used depending upon the location of a particular people, but in most cases the Aboriginal people used a type of native sycamore, possibly Litsea reticulata or Cryptocarya glaucescens (Silver sycamore), White sycamore (Polyscias elegans or Cryptocarya obovata), Ceratopetalum succirubrum (Satin sycamore), Cardwellia sublimia, Cryptocarya hypospodia (Bastard Sycamore), Ceratopetalum virchowii (Pink Sycamore) or Ceratopetalum corymbosum (Mountain sycamore). Sycamores are strong and extremely durable, making them suitable for use in the construction of dugout canoes.

Uses 

Both sea turtles and dugongs were essential components of the Aboriginal diet. The transformation from bark canoes to dugout canoes greatly increased the ability of the tribal hunters to catch and kill both of these types of sea creatures due primarily to a more formidable structure.  Dugout canoes included a stronger and better platform for harpooning that greatly increased the stability of an upright hunter by providing essential footing. In order to capture dugongs and sea turtles, the hunters needed to maintain the utmost degree of stealth. Perfect balance was required and the new dugout canoes gave the hunters this necessary edge.

Additionally, the shift towards using dugout canoes maximized the overall possibilities of seafarers.  Not only did increased sturdiness, speed and stability of Dugout canoes make hunting easier, but these characteristics also allowed for long-distance travel. Whereas bark canoes had been only used for inland use or travel extremely close to the shore, Dugout canoes offered a far greater range of travel which allowed for trade outside the area of the village. Dugout canoes were capable of traveling distances over 500 km. This new vessel gave the Aboriginal people the ability and opportunity to explore, trade and locate additional resources located outside the central location.

Impacts 

The widespread use of dugout canoes had many impacts on Aboriginal life. The most significant were results of the Aboriginal peoples' ability to hunt larger prey. With the strength to transport larger prey over longer distances, dugout enabled the peoples to vastly expand their hunting grounds. This larger prey also enabled support of a larger group of people over a longer period of time. This increase in the ability to support population led to both population growth and expansion.

Torres Strait Islander boats
Torres Strait Islander people, another Indigenous Australian group of peoples (who are not Aboriginal), used a different type of boat – a double outrigger, unique to their area and probably introduced from Papuan communities and later modified. It was about  long, with two bamboo masts and sails made of pandanus-mat. They could sail as far as  and carry up to twelve people.

References

Australian Aboriginal culture
Indigenous boats
Australian Aboriginal bushcraft
History of Indigenous Australians