Stilled Voice: The Murder of Poet Pat Lowther

Same Crime, Different Time: A Historical True Crime Podcast With Jen Chambers

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Stilled Voice: The Murder of Poet Pat Lowther

Jen Chambers

Jun 19, 2025

Transcript

🎬 INTRO & OPENING
“Welcome back to Same Crime, Different Time. I’m Jen Chambers. Tonight, we remember Patricia ‘Pat’ Lowther—a rising Canadian poet cut down at 40 by the very man she trusted. Her life and voice were powerful; her death sent shockwaves through Canada’s literary world. And it still resonates.”

📚 Segment 1: Pat’s Early Life & Poetry

“Born July 29, 1935, in Vancouver, Pat published her first poem at age ten in the Vancouver Sun . She later left school at 16 and worked in an office to support herself but continued to write. In 1968, her debut This Difficult Flowering launched her literary career—followed by The Age of the Bird in 1972, and Milk Stone in 1974 prabook.com+8en.wikipedia.org+8encyclopedia.com+8.”

The Cacadian Encyclopedia says:

Lowther’s first book of poetry, This Difficult Flowering (1968), was critically praised for its precise language and themes. The book explores the tensions between creating art and creating a home life and expands the themes of motherhood and the pain and pleasure of love into universal themes. In “Damn Doom,” for instance, Lowther speaks honestly of the need to create within the chaos of family:

Damn doom to
day after day
break our bright wishes
on this work:
to carve a simple beauty
out of chaos.
“Damn doom to day‑after‑day break our bright wishes on this work…”
From This Difficult Flowering thecanadianencyclopedia.ca.
In her second poetry collection, the Day of the Bird, she writs of a laundry near where Che Guevara was killed, and contrasts the laundry with hte brutality of his death:
A laundry at Vallegrande
a windowless shed
tiled roof
in front two openings
separated only by a pillar
… inside, the body
its eyes open
the head propped
in a tense posture

“She went on to co‑chair the League of Canadian Poets and taught at the University of BC’s writing department—as her feminist voice rose in both poetry and politics. At 40, she’s published her first collection of poetry, and just before she was murdered, had signed with the Oxford University Press to publish a new poetry collection. It was her third book of poetry and her first book to be signed by a major press. poetryfoundation.org+14en.wikipedia.org+14evelazarus.com+14.”

🌧️ Segment 2: Domestic Shadows

“Married to Roy in 1963, she had four children. Roy was also a poet and left-wing activist—but darker things lurked. Friends noted his increasing jealousy over Pat’s growing acclaim. The University of Toronto Libraries says in a article about her that “Her domestic life, however, was complicated and weighed down by poverty and unhappiness. Friends encouraged her to leave her destructive marriage, a personal revolutionary act which she was unable to complete.” .evelazarus.com.”

“In September 1975, Pat vanished. She’d missed a poetry reading at Ironworkers Hall in Vancouver. A week after she was last seen, her daughter Kathy went to the police and reported her missing. When he was questioned, Roy said that she’d been having an affair with another writer who lived in Ontario, Canada, and directed police to find her there. Though police checked all ways of getting out of Vancouver, they didn’t find any evidence of her having left the area. Three weeks later, her body was discovered, badly decomposed, lodged in Furry Creek near Britannia Beach. She had been found face down in the water and submerged underneath a log. She was identified through dental records and fingerprint data.

poetryfoundation.org+7evelazarus.com+7en.wikipedia.org+7.”

🧱 Segment 4: The Murder & Arrest

“Police found 117 blood spots on the East Vancouver home walls and a bloody mattress. Roy first tried to say that he came home and found his wife’s body naked and beaten and was worried that they’d suspect him. So he said that he then wrapped her body up and drove it to the place it was found underneath a railroad bridge, tossing it over a cliff, to get rid of it. I guess he thought it would wash out to sea and he’d be rid of the problem with her entirely.

Eventually, confronted with evidence, Roy confessed he struck Pat with a hammer and disposed of her body after wrapping it in the car abcbookworld.com +1evelazarus.com+1.” He had taken both the hammer in questionand the mattress with him to another island, where he attempted to was h the mattress on both sides, and would later tell the police th at the remaining stains wete menstrual blood.

“In June 1977, Roy was convicted of second‑degree murder—and sentenced to life. He died in prison in 1985 .”

💔 Segment 5: Pat’s Legacy

“Pat’s posthumous A Stone Diary was published by Oxford in 1977 poetryinvoice.ca+4en.wikipedia.org+4thecanadianencyclopedia.ca+4. In 1980, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award was established, honoring outstanding Canadian women poets annually montrealserai.com+12en.wikipedia.org+12evelazarus.com+12.”\

BC Studies reflected:

“Her death… was a catalyst for that changing consciousness in our country… she still stands in the crucible of conflict.” capitalcurrent.ca +2bcstudies.com+2montrealserai.com+2.
Her children are Christine Lowther (also a poet), Beth Lowther, and Kathy Lyons (died in 2015). Her son is Alan Domphousse.
The Canadian Poetry Online service from The University of Toronto sais of her legacy that:
“The loss to her family and friends is immeasurable, and the loss to Canadian literature was widely acknowledged. In The Dictionary of Canadian Biographies, Hilda Thomas suggests that Pat Lowther's death "robbed Canadian poetry of one of its most vital and visionary poets."
An excellent work about Pat Lowther, the Half-Lives of Pat Lowther by Christine Wiesenthal, talks about how her sory is now an iconic one of spousal abuse in Canada. She was also one of the most iconic and catalyst-producing writers of the 1970’s, in that she wrote about feminine desire, feminine rage, and feminine power. She also was emblematic because she chased those things as a high school dropout who gained traction to be one of the most celebrated female poets in Canada.
Wisenthal says the real mystery is how she became involved with Roy Lowther in the first place? Roy lowther was a literary emerging giant in the time of Pat’s emergence as well, but he was dismissed from his university and was eclipsed neatly by his wife. It’s hard not to believe that his jealousy didn’t contribute to the murder. In a review of Wisenthal’s book about Pat, Linda Rogers said about the nature of the gender politics of her work:
“The third mystery is whether we would still be hearing of Pat Lowther as a poet had her husband not bashed her head in and left her broken and bleeding on a beach where he had once made love to her. The sad poignancy of her death has made Lowther a martyr for women who look, as she did, for a voice to lead them out of the wilderness.”

Pat Lowther left an indelible legacy and a vulnerable reminder that women sometimes have to be on guard from the ones they love best.
“This wasn’t just personal—it mirrored national shifts around women’s voices, ambitions, and safety.”
“Pat Lowther’s life was full—poems, politics, parenting. Her death was brutal, at the hands of someone she loved. But her words endure—and so does her memory. If you’re moved, read her work. Share her story. Support feminist poets. There are links to Pat Lowther’s books in the show notes. I’m excited to get back into poetry. One of my other favoite female poets, is Mary Oliver, who’s transcendent Wild Geese might be the most beautiful poem I’ve ever read. It begins:

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. https://www.best-poems.net/mary_oliver/wild_geese.html

So to end each episode, I thought I’d share my wins or the books I’ve been reading, and invite you guys to share your books you’ve been reading, the music or podcasts you’ve been listening to, or your wins lately too so I can spotlight you and give you a listener shout out in the next episode. Gotta close out with wins.

Listener Dana Hunter Fradella wrote in with a book recommendation from a speaker she went to see recently, who recommended to her a book by Delores Cannon called Between Life and Death. “I’ve never read anything like it, and I’m here for it 100%. She’s talking to people who are hypnotized, and they’re talking about their past lives and the possibility that we choose our own deaths.” So interesting! Thank you, Dana! Go check out her podcast, Girls Who Recover; that’s Dana Hunter Fradella. And the book she mentioned is Between Life and Death by Delores Cannon.

My win is that my book came out early! The Murder of Sheriff W. W. Winters and Other Eugene Cases is out now by Arcadia Press! I went to my local Barnes & Noble just to browse, and I was going to visit my books like I always do. That’s my secret thing: visiting my books at any bookstore I see them in. I saw that not only did they get it out early, they made it the Pick of the Month! So check out my books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite bookstore. I’m going to fill you in on all my book tour stuff this summer; you probably will want me to shut up about it, but it was such a nice surprise. Let me know your wins by DM on Instagram @jennifer_chambers_ or on my Substack or Facebook. I would love to hear them and give you a shout-out too.
“I’m Jen Chambers. Thanks for listening to Same Crime, Different Time. Let’s keep Pat’s voice alive.”