“Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape”
Edited by Bob Henderson and Sean
Blenkinsop
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth
Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
29.95
ISBN 978-1-988783-81-9
This beautifully-bound anthology of 21 essays written by paddlers and edited by educators—and intrepid canoeists and guides—Bob Henderson (ON) and Sean Blenkinsop (BC) deserves a much longer review than this 500-word assessment. In short: it’s extraordinary.
Paddling Pathways: Reflections from a Changing Landscape contains a wealth of thought-provoking essays on the rivers, lakes, and oceans the diverse contributors have navigated via canoe or kayak—often in groups but sometimes solo—and it examines the paddlers’ interior worlds as these contemplate being present; history; culture; relationships with plants, animals and other creatures; Indigenous Canada (land and territorial acknowledgements and “Settler Responsibilities” are included); ecology; climate change; and, as Bruce Cockburn contributes in his Foreword, the “soul-expanding space” where one can get “a glimpse of the world as it was made.” Maps, black and white photos, and the editors’ numerous “Suggested Reading” lists are superb accompaniments to the layered essays.
Henderson has previously published books on heritage travel and outdoor life, and Blenkinsop, a professor at Simon Fraser University who writes about “wild pedagogies” and “ecologizing education,” agree that as travelers on land and water, they/we need to “shift pathways and create narratives that no longer focus on competing, completing, and conquering” re: our understanding of the natural world and, indeed, human culture. They invited contributors to select a “special paddling place/route” and a “personally significant theme,” and the result is this compendium of erudite, entertaining, often philosophical and political essays that are delightful to sink into.
Several writers discuss the “gifts to be found in slowing down,” ie: the discoveries of cranberries (Anjeanette LeMay) and the “orangish glow of cloudberries” (Beth Foster). Foster writes that wind and rain altered her group’s 9-day paddle plans, but the rewards of “focus[ing] on the present” included “an unclouded blue-sky panoramic vista” and “the profound joy of stillness.”
Greg Scutt ponders Settler history and the connection between river canoeing and fly-fishing in his second-person piece set it Stikine country, “the largest wilderness area in British Columbia.”
Michael Paul Samson recounts his kayak trip around Newfoundland at age 22, a pre-wedding adventure down the Ohio River and into the Mississippi, and “the resilience of the human race.”
Ric Driediger, a guide for Churchill River Canoe Outfitters, was seeking relaxation on his solo trip. He considers that he’s perhaps “so addicted to being busy, [he] can’t just sit,” and he desires to “be lost in time and place and imagination.” Success! At one point he can’t even remember how long he’s been out. This essay’s brilliant surprise ending left me gasping.
Kayaker Fiona Hough speaks honestly of the joys and challenges of taking youth with mental health issues on a two-week trip in Clayoquet Sound, and how one completes the trip “freshly clothed in an ocean skin.”
Gratitude’s braided through these essays. Zabe MacEachren writes: “I also like to kiss the palm of my hand and then place it flat on the ground wherever I have slept.”
This book’s a major achievement. Please read it.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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“Backwater Mystic Blues”
By Lloyd Ratzlaff
Shadowpaw Press Reprise
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
18.99
ISBN 978-1-989398-60-9
I somehow missed Backwater Mystic
Blues—the contemplative collection of essays by Saskatoon’s Lloyd Ratzlaff—when
it was first published in 2006. Shame on me, for I greatly admired Ratzlaff’s
earlier book, The Crow Who Tampered With Time, and bought several copies.
And shame on me, as—disclaimer—I call this gracious writer a friend.
Fortunately, fate’s found a way to deliver Ratzlaff’s second essay collection into my hands these many years later, and like a song you’ve not heard in a long time but, upon listening again, remember how much you enjoyed, I’m so pleased to hear the distinguished yet down-home voice of my old Mennonite friend—a former minister, counsellor and educator—once again. Backwater Mystic Blues has been reborn with Shadowpaw Press Reprise, a press that publishes “New editions of notable, previously published books”. Hurray, that.
These cultivated essays are reminiscences of a life lived with intention, but also with abundant questioning (particularly spiritual) and grief (the dissolution of a marriage, career dissatisfaction, deaths). What you’ll also find here is gentleness, nature keenly observed, scholarship, and page-by-page evidence of a human who walks through this world with a generous heart. Disparate essays are tethered via consistently effective writing, ie: the ability to transport. Here Ratzlaff describes the cellar in his childhood home:
“The one naked light bulb scarcely lit the cellar’s dim edges, where other shelves stood, holding crocks and jars and bronze canning tubs, where potatoes mouldered in the bin in the northeast, darkest corner and the upright hulk of the metal bathtub brooded of Saturdays, when it was wrestled up through the passageway so we could take turns bathing for church on Sunday.”
As a child it was Ratzlaff’s responsibility to fetch water from the village well, two blocks from home, and he writes of the enamel cup he used to dip into the bucket upon its safe return to the cellar. Years later he “salvaged” this blue cup. “It holds the innocence of childhood, and the taste of clean cold tin straight to the gut slakes my soul and puts Time in its place.”
Ratzlaff was raised in a fundamentalist sect. “In my early teens, it was a big excursion to attend a Youth for Christ rally in Saskatoon,” he writes. Decades of wrestling with “The Old Man up there and his buggers here below” saw Ratzlaff leave a 10-year career in ministry, but he confesses that he’s been “married—for better, for worse, forever—to the Christian religion,” and these essays frequently allude to his faith. The writer also went to Switzerland to honour Carl Jung, gives great consideration to his dream-world, and set aside his King James Bible for the New English Bible (Oxford Study Edition); what falls from the pages of that good Book when it’s reopened years later is nothing short of holy.
Imaginative, educated, a dreamer, and the kind of guy who finds God in “a gaggle of geese on a sandbar”. I’m so glad this book found me.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PULBISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.,COM
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“Small Reckonings”
By Karin Melberg Schwier
Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.99
ISBN 978-1-989398-74-6
Sometimes a book is so phenomenal it goes into multiple printings, either with the original publisher or with a fresh publisher. Such is the case with Saskatoon author Karin Melberg Schwier’s Small Reckonings, a Watrous, SK-based novel set between 1914 and 1936, and inspired by true events. I reviewed this book—for which the writer received a John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award for Fiction—when it was first published by Burton House Books in 2020. A revised edition came out in 2021 with Copestone, and that same year it earned a Saskatchewan Book Award. This year, Shadowpaw Press Reprise has released the third edition. This story’s got staying power.
I stand by what I claimed in my initial review: Small Reckonings deserves a huge audience. Kudos to the multi-genre writer, and to Regina publisher (and writer) Edward Willett for recognizing that many well-written books deserve another chance to shine. Excerpts of my earlier review of this beautifully-crafted and highly enjoyable novel also get a reprise:
Melberg Schwier expertly creates individuated characters readers will care deeply about, including the central figure, Violet, who, at birth, looks like “a large pink spider,” and of whom the attending doctor says “‘There are places for these children.’” Equally well-drawn are Violet’s doting brother, John; kind neighbour, Hank; and the Ukrainian Yuzik family. The characters struggle through the Depression, and with the disparate lots they’ve been dealt.
I know Watrous well, thus it was especially fun reading the descriptions of this “boomtown”. Homesteader William boasts that “‘Watrous has wooden sidewalks now, and shops and a bakery. A very decent butcher. A poolroom and barbershop.’” He says the mineral springs possess “‘healing powers, so say the Indians’”. I can smell the “sweet scent of [Scandanavian] rosettes just pulled from hot oil,” and hear the “‘Uff da’” exclamations. I easily see the “green apron with yellow rickrack,” and almost sneeze at the description of the schoolboy “banging erasers at arm’s length on the bottom step, a cloud of chalk dust drifting away lazily in the afternoon heat”. I transported as I read about caragana seed pods “snapping and cracking” in the sunshine, and as the lead siblings spoke of “anti-I-over” and “Simon Says”. The “forlorn autumn sound” of honking geese was like an echo.
This book succeeds because the writer’s learned the difficult art of literary balance … as skilled as she is at penning descriptive scenes, they never slow the pacing of this taut novel. The book’s structure is nuanced, and seemingly minor details—like a fishhook caught in an eye—have resonance. The characters are people we know or can easily imagine. Here’s Hanusia, the raw Ukrainian midwife, upon the birth of John: “‘So quick first baby! Much hair. Strong boy, good for farm work. Your husband, he will be happy.’”) And the plot? Movie potential.
I read with pleasure that Melberg Schwier has a sequel in the works. I have high expectations for Inheriting Violet. Watch for news of its release at karinschwier.ca.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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awāsi-nēhiyawēwin masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Colouring Book—Plains
Cree People”
Written by Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.)
Felix, and Elmer Ballantyne
Illustrated by Aleigha Agecoutay
Published by YNWP
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.95
ISBN 978-1-77869-013-6
It’s been said that when a language
dies, a culture goes with it. In Canada several Indigenous languages are in
fact endangered, but the one I grew up hearing in northern Saskatchewan—Cree—remains
one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in the country. Still, it’s
important to continue teaching it so Cree youth can connect with their ancestors,
their history, and cultural traditions. I’ll add that it’s also a fine idea for
anyone who lives in northern communities to learn at least a few words of Cree;
my parents took classes because they lived alongside and worked with Plains Cree
people. I picked up a small vocabulary, as well, mostly from friends who lived
on Flying Dust First Nation.
I’m glad that there are educators, Elders, and Knowledge Keepers who continue to find creative ways to make learning Plains Cree fun for children. Patricia Deiter, Allen J. (A.J.) Felix, and Elmer Ballantyne, the three Saskatchewan writers of awāsi-nēhiyawēwin masinahikanis: A Little Plains Cree Colouring Book—Plains Cree People, have done just that. The 55-page colouring book is a complement to their reference guide for teaching the Plains Cree language, nēhiyawēwin awāsi-masinahikanis—A Little Plains Cree Book for Children, published by YNWP in 2022, and Deiter, from the Peepeekisis Cree Nation, introduces the book by explaining that they “hope to provide children with the basics of the Plains Cree language with the goal that we, as Plains Cree people, will still have our language for future generations”. The Plains Cree translation is credited to Felix and Ballantyne, plus Inez Deiter, “a Residential School survivor who had to relearn her Cree language”.
The book is simply (no facial features and mostly no finger definition) but effectively illustrated by Aleigha Agecoutay, also from the Peepeekisis Cree Nation. A figure or figures appear on each page, and they are identified by who they are, ie: a child (awāsis), an old man (kisēyiniw), and/or by their profession, ie: a teacher (okiskinwahamākēw), a fisherman (onochikinasewew). The large black line drawings feature floral bead work, braids, regalia, long earrings and horses, and many would be best coloured in pencil crayons, as crayons would be too thick for some of the finer details, ie: the doctor and nurse’s stethoscopes, and the bells on the dancer’s jingle dress.
The creators have included good information about their people and language, ie: the fact that the Cree nation is “Canada’s largest tribal group,” “Plains Cree is spoken in 43 First Nations communities in Saskatchewan alone,” and “Everyone older than the speaker will have a specific term, but anyone younger than the speaker will be addressed as nisīmis (my younger brother or sister)”. There’s a page included on the Plains Crees’ extended kinship system—interesting—and pages dedicated to the “Sound system” (14 consonants, 7 vowels) and colours.
Hats off to these collaborators for doing their part in keeping the Plains Cree language alive and well, and doing it in a way that little learners will love. kinanāskomitināwāw—thank you!
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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