Can you find love in the Trinity College Archives? Yes!

In honour of Valentine’s Day, we offer a 1940 love letter (first and last pages) from Derwyn Owen, Provost of Trinity College from 1957 to 1971, to his soon-to-be wife Anne Armour. At the time Derwyn Owen was attending the Union Theological College in New York and there are 157 letters from this period to Anne, whom he married in 1942 when he completed his degree.

It may not be known that John Strachan was a lover of poetry and a serious amateur poet himself. The valentine he wrote to his wife around 1847 belies the popular representation of Strachan as remote and unfeeling. In fact he was a family man who clearly adored his wife Ann, 40 years after their marriage.

VALENTINE

Some forty years have passed away
Since I was heard in truth to say
I take you for my wife today – Dear Annie

Me thinks I see and hear thee now
With trembling take the marriage vow
And still the same good wife art thou – dear Annie

To me no ebb thy kindness knows
But like a stream perpetual flows
On may it flow to life’s calm close – dear Annie

Tho’ cares and sorrows not a few
Our path have crossed they but renew
Our love so that it firmer grew – dear Annie

Our hairs that here and there turn grey
In silent accents seem to say
All mortal beauties fade away – dear Annie

O may our peaceful lives decline
Like cloudless suns that set to shine
In other worlds with light Divine – dear Annie

John Toronto

c.1847
Trinity College Archives F2053