“Protecting the Prairies: Lorne Scott and the Politics of Conservation”
By Andrea Olive
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$32.95
ISBN 9-780889-779600
Andrea Olive’s Protecting the Prairies: Lorne Scott and the Politics of Conservation ingeniously illuminates the fifty-year history of Saskatchewan’s environmental policies and conservation practices (or lack thereof) via a political biography of lifelong conservationist, activist, farmer and politician Lorne Scott, who began building bluebird nest boxes as a teen and eventually served as Saskatchewan’s Environment and Resource minister. (And there’s much of import in between.) Through exhaustive research and interviews with Scott and his conservationist and political contemporaries, Olive makes a strong case for why Scott’s considered to be “Saskatchewan’s most important naturalist,” and her writing’s so dynamic, this reviewer didn’t notice she was getting a broad education in Saskatchewan politics, as well as conservationism.
Humble, community-oriented and sans secondary education, Scott’s earned so many accolades and awards, there’d not be a wall large enough to contain them: from the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, Ducks Unlimited, Canadian Nature Federation, and the Whooping Crane Conservation Association; an Order of Merit (“as an outstanding young citizen”); a Saskatchewan Centennial Medal; the Saskatchewan Order of Merit; a Governor General’s Conservation Award; and the Order of Canada … just to name a few.
He's published numerous newspaper and magazine articles; worked at the Saskatchewan Museum of Natural History and as a park naturalist for Wascana Centre Authority (both in Regina); banded tens of thousands of birds; served on/presided over myriad boards and organizations; and been a politician. Scott was nominated as the NDP candidate for the Indian Head-Wolseley constituency in 1990, and elected as government member of the Legislative Assembly for that area—where he was born, raised, and remains—in 1991. From his service as reeve to his ongoing work with Nature Saskatchewan and his position of chair of St. Andrew’s United Church Council in Indian Head, this man’s legacy of volunteerism and his commitments to conservation and community have earned him glowing praise across the board, from politicians to fellow farmers in the province where, Olive writes, “most people … seem to be rather carefree on environmental issues”.
Superhuman? It would almost appear so, but kudos to Olive for also delivering a balanced perspective. She alludes to Scott’s complicity (as Environment Minister) with the NDP government on uranium development, and writes that “climate changes leaves him fumbling”.
Olive is a SK-born political scientist and human geographer at the University of Toronto Missisauga. Her passions are “environmental policy” and “understanding how people see and value their relationship with nature”. Aside from her revered subject, Lorne Scott, she credits writer and grasslands conservationist Trevor Herriot, author Wallace Stegner, and American conservationist/ author Aldo Leopold as inspirations. She speaks often of the “western paradox”—the desire for a sustained, resource-based economy and the reality that such economy plunders natural resources, habitats, and the creatures who depend on them.
After reading Olive’s exquisite book, one might indeed believe Lorne Scott wears a cape, but no, “To his family and friends, he is just Lorne—the farmer driving around in an old van with the licence plate “Nature”.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
“Unspoken”
By Tammy Ottenbreit
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth
Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.95
ISBN 978-1-988783-97-0
It’s delightfully surprising to encounter a book penned by someone who’s come to writing after a career in a completely different field, and find that the book proves well worth the read. Case in point, Unspoken, by Regina’s Tammy Ottenbreit. A longtime medical laboratory technologist, Ottenbreit “needed something to challenge her creative skills” upon retirement, and she found it in writing Unspoken. The mostly historical novel is based on the “tragic tale of [her] great-aunt,” and Ottenbreit does her relative’s story justice in this 278-page fictionalized account. It opens in 1922 Winnipeg, ends in Moose Jaw (2016), and includes a realistic Atlantic sea-crossing for a group of Hungarians lured to Canada by the promise of “one hundred and sixty acres for ten dollars”.
We initially meet Sister Maria, a nun and midwife at the Sisters of Mercy home (for “the poor and unfortunate women”), where dead babies are buried with graves “marked with a rock, handpainted by the older children”. Gulp. We can surmise that contemporary Clair, in Saskatoon, will have some connection to the empathetic nun. The former’s on a mission to discover who her deceased father’s biological mother was. Claire has abandonment issues: her father left the family when Clair was eleven, and there’s a “beast that gnaws at [her] soul”. She hopes that a DNA testing kit and diligent research will provide some answers to the mystery of her father. She has an urn with his cremains, and considers how bizarre it is that “A man’s entire life [is] taking up less space in the closet than [her] shoes”.
It’s two other female characters, however, that are the story’s main focus. Anna is married with children and about to board a ship in Liverpool, along with her siblings and their families. Anna’s daughter, Annie, was born deaf and mute, and her “affliction made her dear to [her mother’s] heart”. A morbid cliffhanger near the end of Part 1 in this three-part novel makes it impossible to put the book down.
Ottenbreit’s at her finest when she’s describing the difficult sea journey across the Atlantic on the Bavaria. Walking the gangplank to board was terrifying for Anna: “The height hypnotized me, and the sight of the icy grey water swirling below froze me in place”. The steerage area “reminded [her] of a burned forest of tall, leafless trees in all directions. Dim oil lamps hung from hooks …”. The red-bearded deckhand leads them past the section designated for single men, and warns “Women and children alike have been grabbed, and no good comes from it”. Indeed, these rough men became “bolder and more offensive as the days passed”.
Twenty years after immigrating, the Hungarian families are celebrating Dominion Day 1921 in Saskatchewan, where they’ve happily homesteaded between Regina and Moose Jaw. When Ottenbreit skillfully juxtaposes a sexual assault with “party lights glittered in the distance,” I know she’s earned a seat at the Authors’ table. For pacing, plotting, interesting characters and a satisfying ending, Unspoken earns high marks.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
“A Moment of Clarity: Stories of Lives Lived and Unlived”
By F. E. Eldridge
Published by YNWP
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$22.95
ISBN 978-1-77869-007-5
Beyond the handsome cover of Saskatoon writer F.E. Eldridge’s first book, A Moment of Clarity: Stories of Lives Lived and Unlived, I discovered bittersweet tales that span decades, cover a rainbow of emotions, and cross borders both real and metaphorical. Except for one, the twenty-two stories feature female protagonists … from an Annapolis Valley, NS girlhood in the 1950s to a young woman’s lonely college days in Edmonton, and from work in NWT to mid-life relationships and concerns in Saskatoon and nearby Dundurn, SK.
The stories are “loosely based” on Eldridge’s own experiences, which lends extra authenticity to the settings and characters. These sometimes yearning, sometimes feisty main characters are generally from large, impoverished but hard-working rural families, and they often have difficult relationships with their mothers. Solace is frequently found in dogs, ie: Harold, “a black, long-haired mongrel of uncertain origin” whom character Lily confides in after her baby sister dies; Reggie, a German shepherd that enjoys road trips with his widowed owner, Lil Thomas, who operates a herb farm and finds a duffle bag filled with $90,000 (will she keep it?); and vomiting siblings Opal and Pearl, seven-year-old “Medium-sized black German shepherds” who “[fidget] like a couple of restless tap dancers to be let into the backyard”.
In the first story we meet fifteen-year-old Tess, one of a family of six children. Tess is responsible for “mak[ing] the family supper every night” and getting her younger siblings off to school. Mature beyond her years, she’s the daughter of a hard mother and a father who suffers his wife’s wrath, and drinks more than he should. When the children bring home a blind kitten, their father surreptitiously kills it, and—as suggested in the titular “moment of clarity”—empathetic Tess considers “the quiet war that must be raging within him”.
Eleven-year-old Lucy also works hard: she earns money picking fruit and vegetables in the Annapolis Valley, and her mother insists that the girl “use her summer wages for school clothes and supplies”. It’s 1961, and Lucy’s thrilled to receive her brother’s hand-me-down bike, even if it doesn’t have a seat, back wheel or chain. Without the bike, she’d be walking the three miles to school.
These characters aren’t always presented in a positive light. Nan, in “A Sister’s Ambiguity,” steals from her father and resents her sister, who suffered greatly after drinking lye as a toddler. Anna Mae pesters her grandma’s boarder to let her try chewing tobacco. With just a year between them, sisters Laura and Florence get into outrageous physical fights so often, a social worker steps in and threatens to remove one of them from home. The hatred extends into adulthood.
In this book filled with women, it’s interesting that my favourite story, “Mr. Simpson,” concerns a man. It’s a mental health story—Ralph’s phobic about bugs—and an example of how when we choose a perspective far different from our own, the resulting story can be profound. All in all, well done F. E. Edridge.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
“The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief”
By Steven Mayoff
Published by Radiant Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$25.00
ISBN 9-781989-274972
Buckle up, Readers. PEI’s Steven Mayoff
has penned a clever and entertaining novel that melds Pink Floyd; Judaism; art;
dirty local politics; asinine radio show hosts; a foul-mouthed, riding crop-wielding
webcaster in Anne of Green Gables orange braids; a hurricane; and a trio
of unlikely characters—Judas (yes, that Judas), Fagin (from Oliver
Twist) and Shakespeare’s Shylock. The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief
is an immersive trip that leaps across the fine line between gritty realism and
magic realism, and I’m glad I went for the ride.
Mayoff’s book aptly begins with a Socrates quote about madness, “which is a divine gift,” and for much of the 347 pages the First Person narrator and politically-subversive artist-of-some-acclaim, Samson Grief, wonders if he has indeed gone mad. Grief creates “fantasia(s) of Jewish iconography set on modern-day Prince Edward Island,” and his most acclaimed work is Anne of Bergen-Belsen, a painting of a raggedly-dressed Anne Shirley with burning eyes, tattooed numbers on her skeletal forearm, and a Star of David armband. She’s standing before a concentration camp fence and a “candy-striped lighthouse”.
This powerful and controversial work attracts the attention of “the Supreme One,” and his messengers—Judas, Fagin and Shylock—spontaneously appear “in gaudy summer shirts and goofy headgear” to protagonist Grief. They explain—in individually distinct and cracking good diction—that The Supreme One (aka God) has “seen fit to bless this small red mote [PEI] as the new Promised Land”. Before that happens, however, Grief must build a synagogue on the site of a 100-acre garbage dump, which a shady, bolo tie-wearing local entrepreneur-turned-MLA already has slated for a money-making resort and kids’ camp. This nefarious politician’s daughter is the gal webcamming in the crimson bodice, and his hijab-wearing ex-wife is the woman Grief’s falling for.
Mayoff’s previously published the award-winning short story collection Fatted Calf Blues, a novel and two poetry collections. A painterly writer, he explains Grief’s “love at first sight” with the island’s “cobalt rivers and cerulean bays” and the “endless sky of washed-out robin’s egg blue.” From farmers’ markets to the Confederation Bridge to “the slightly concave loneliness of living on an island” and the Crazy Diamond bar managed by his Pink Floyd-loving, moonshine-selling friends, Mayoff’s painted a riotous portrait of his beloved PEI, complete with hurricane (“Hurricane X”) which might indeed usher in “a new beginning” for Canada’s smallest province.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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“My Little Métis
Sleepy Horse”
Written and Illustrated by Leah Marie
Dorion
Published by Gabriel Dumont Institute
Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$17.50
ISBN 978-1-988011-31-8
Sometimes simplicity’s best, and that’s particularly true when it comes to the plots for board books written for toddlers and young children. Prince Albert, SK Métis writer and artist Leah Marie Dorion keeps it simple—but also beautiful and bilingual—in her board book My Little Métis Sleepy Horse, released by Gabriel Dumont Institute Press. The vibrantly-illustrated story’s Michif translation is credited to Michif language keepers and educators Irma Klyne and Larry Fayant, both also from Saskatchewan.
The book shares a day in the life of a nameless girl and her beloved horse, beginning with “My horse wakes up. I wake up.” The full-bleed illustration opposite this reveals a yellow and orange, groovy-styled sun with rays like long arms that stretch across the page; cheery, oversized flowers; and the basic figures of a horse and a black-haired girl wearing a purple dress. The child’s arms salute the sun, and the colours and stylistic use of imperfect circles within all the objects—including the grass and the sky—set the upbeat tone.
Text is minimal, ie: “My horse eats grass. I eat an apple,” “My horse runs fast. I run fast,” and My horse rests. I rest”. The words and corresponding illustrations demonstrate the girl’s close relationship to her horse and the activities they share, ie: jumping and playing. The horse theme is apropos, as “Horse stories are an important theme in Métis oral history,” and though any child could certainly enjoy this small, easy-to-hold book, when Métis children have this story read to them, it “can help reconnect [them] to their Métis cultural routes on the high plains”.
Dorion’s been writing and illustrating books for several years, and her numerous titles include The Diamond Willow Walking Stick: A Traditional Métis Story about Generosity and Relatives with Roots: A Story about Métis Women’s Connection to the Land. If you’re already familiar with her award-winning work, you’ll know that “Her artwork celebrates the strength and resilience of Métis women and families”.
The story comes full circle, with the child and horse sleeping on the ground— after a fun and active day—beneath dragonflies, stars, blue and purple circles and the blue infinity symbol that’s featured on the Métis flag. “The symbol represents the immortality of the nation,” (metisnation.org) and again, this is fitting, as books like Dorion’s keep the Michif stories and language alive. This illustration also appears on this sturdy book’s cover.
Translators Klyne and Fayant share extensive backgrounds in preserving the Michif language. Klyne grew up on the road allowance east of Katepwa in the Qu’Appelle Valley. She worked for the Department of Education in Regina and served thirty-two years with Gabriel Dumont Institute. Fayant, also from the Qu’Appelle Valley Road Allowance, “picked stones and cut pickets for farmers” in his youth. He lives in Balcarres, SK, and continues to teach Michif.
We’ve all heard about “a boy and his dog”. Thank you, Dorion, for mixing it up, and sharing “a girl and her horse” story … in two languages.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
