High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Gillian (Gilean) Joan Douglas (February 1, 1900 - October 31, 1993) was a Canadian nature writer. While she was best known for her work as a poet, she was also an accomplished photo journalist, feminist, historian, and politician. Douglas` inspiration for her writing stemmed from her desire to be an independent woman in a patriarchal world. Her writings—her poems, articles, novels, and autobiographies—extend over a period of eighty years, including four marriages, ten years in the Cascade Mountains, and forty years on Cortes Island, British Columbia.