Victoria Ivanel Johnson is author/playwright J. Ivanel's paternal grandmother. V.I.J. penned a first draft idea of Still Life ( her orig. title: Prison Is A Private Place) in 1948. She was a 1920s "quietly rebellious" flapper who attended for a short time, the famous private girls' school, Alma College (near where she grew up in a small village south-west of Toronto). It was here where she learned to become an enthusiastic patron of the arts; she thus travelled the world, attended many Broadway, Toronto and West End shows, attended galleries and poetry readings and taught elocution. However, she mostly enjoyed sitting at her typewriter the majority of her days pounding out short stories, novels and plays. Although two of the latter were produced by her village's community theatre group, (see below photos) she only ever approached one publisher in her lifetime. When she was told that her work needed more 'boudoir scenes', she determined never again to receive a rejection and thereafter wrote only for her family and for her own enjoyment of the process. It was she who gave her grand-daughter her first electric typewriter on which to begin her writing career. In her last days, J. Ivanel promised her that her grandmother's name would someday appear on the front cover of books, and that her novelist legacy, starting with Still Life, would be promoted.  Photos below are of her in her theatre troupe, at her new writing desk (also inherited by J.Ivanel) in 1959 and as she looked in the early 1970s when Still Life has been ultimately set.