YORK DOWNS

Composer: E. Margaret Clarkson

Edith Margaret Clarkson was a Canadian hymn writer and author, born June 8, 1915, in Melville, Saskatchewan, and long resident in Toronto. Trained as a teacher, she served for decades in public schools while writing hymns and devotional prose marked by doctrinal clarity and poetic restraint. Early texts include “So Send I You” (1937) and “We Come, O Christ, to Thee” (1946); later she contributed widely sung hymns such as “O Father, You Are Sovereign” and “For Your Gift of God the Spirit,” and published numerous books on the Christian life and suffering. Her work—deeply shaped by Reformed conviction—was commissioned and sung in missionary and ecumenical settings worldwide. Clarkson died in 2008, having been named a Fellow… Go to person page >