12 Short Stories of White Canada
Dr. Swagata Bhattacharya
In this chapter we shall discuss:
- Background of Canadian Prose
- Biographies of six short story writers: Alice Munro, Ernest Buckler, Mordecai Richler, Gabrielle Roy, Susanna Moodie and Clark Blaise.
- Plot summaries of six short stories: ‘The Jack Randa Hotel’, ‘Penny in the Dust’, ‘Benny’, ‘The Dead Child’, ‘The Charivari’ and ‘Going to India’
Background of Canadian Prose:
The first writers in Canada were explorers, travellers and British army officers who recorded their impressions of British North America in diaries, journals and letters. These were the earliest examples of prose writing in English in Canada. They were mostly accounts of journeys and heroic achievements of conquering the vast, unknown North, and encounters with the Natives who lived there. The earliest examples of such Canadian prose are Samuel Harne’s A Journey from Prince of Wales’ Fort in Hudson Bay to the Northern Ocean (1795) and Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s Voyages from Montreal…Through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans (1801). Compared to prose, poetry had developed faster in the early period in English Canada. However, till the 1900s, the historical romance was the only form of popular prose in Canada. Julia Hart’s St .Ursula’s Convent, or, the Nun of Canada (1824) and William Kirby’s The Golden Dog (1877) were quite popular at the time.
By 1900, novels of local colour started to overshadow the historical romances. The earliest among them was Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908). Also, Ralph Connor, Stephen Leacock and Mazo de la Roche were the best-selling writers of the period. Frederick Philip Grove wrote novels depicting man’s struggle for mastery over himself and his land and Emily Carr wrote stories about her encounters with the First Nations in British Columbia (for example, Klee Wyck, 1941)
The 1940s and 50s saw a great boom in novels which were centered on sensitive artists or restless children as protagonists. Sinclair Ross’s As for Me and My House (1941), Ernest Buckler’s The Mountain and the Valley (1952) are milestones of this period. The other significant novel of the time was Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes (1945). After the 1950s, short stories slowly began to make their way in Canadian Literature. Alice Munro, Margaret Lawrence, Leonard Cohen and Mavis Gallant created characters of remarkable strength and beauty in their short stories. Munro’s stories – in collections ranging from Dance of the Happy Shades (1968) to The View from Castle Rock (2006) – depict the domestic lives and relationships of strong, independent women in the small towns of Ontario and British Columbia. While Cohen celebrated the relationship between sainthood, violence, eroticism and artistic creativity, Mavis Gallant depicted isolated character with fragile worlds of illusion surrounding them. Gradually Margaret Atwood took over the reins from her predecessors and dissected contemporary urban life and sexual politics with trenchant irony in her novels and short stories.
Several writers in the 1960s and 70s subverted the traditional conventions of fiction and shifted from realist to surrealist, self-reflexive and feminist modes. During the 1980s and 90s, the ideas of self and nation, of belonging and loss, and the breaking down of the traditional boundaries of gender and genre gradually became important. Also, from this period onwards Canadian writing in English was no longer restricted only to white Canada but started incorporating the First Nations and the various diasporas.
Alice Munro
Alice Laidlaw (1931-) was born in Wingham, Ontario. She studied English and Journalism at the University of Western Ontario. In 1951 she married James Munro and moved to West Vancouver. Later, in 1963, the couple moved to Victoria and opened a store called Munro’s Books. Most of Alice Munro’s stories are set in Huron where a girl tries to come to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in. Munro is famous as a short story writer which eventually won her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. Her famous works include Tongues of the Happy Shades (1968), Lives of Girls and Women (1971), Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004).
‘The Jack Randa Hotel’
‘The Jack Randa Hotel’ revolves around Gail, a Canadian woman of Russian origin. Gallya had moved to Canada with her family and had become Gail to make herself more Canadian. At a very young age, she had moved away from her family with a boyfriend and had lived her life on her terms. After having lost her baby in an accident, Gail one day meets Will who desperately falls in love with her. She settles down with Will and his mother and just when she feels that her life is perfect and happy, Will leaves her for a much younger woman. Will and his new partner Sandra settle down in Brisbane. A jilted Gail decides to follow Will and see with her own eyes how happy he is with this other woman. She sells her business, collects a large sum of money and carefully changes her hairstyle, clothes and her entire getup. She then sets off for her adventure to Brisbane. On reaching the place, she finds out Will’s house and manages to sneak out the information that Will is in correspondence with a woman called Ms. Thornaby. Gail goes to the place and fiunds out that Ms. Thornaby is dead. She hires the flat and herself poses as Ms. Thornaby and continues to correspond with Will. She was hopeful that this will lead Will to come to the place in search of Ms. Thornaby one day. What she had hoped for did happen. Will actually came looking for the lady to whom he has been writing. But when she saw him coming she could not bring herself to face him. She locked herself inside the apartment while Will banged on the door. He realized that it was Gail, his former wife and no one else. The moment he left, Gail vacated the apartment and rushed to the airport. She was still undecided where she would go now but she was sure of one thing that from now on, it was Will’s turn to follow her. Will had once left her for the woman who no longer fascinated him and she was sure that the fact that she had actually followed him to Australia from Canada would make him realize that it was she who actually loved him. Thus, now it was Will’s turn to follow Gail all over the world and find out where she was.
Ernest Buckler
Ernest Buckler (1908-1984) was born in the village of West Dalhousie, Nova Scotia. He studied Philosophy at the University of Toronto and later joined his farm in Bridgetown. He is famous for his celebrated work The Mountain and the Valley (1952). Buckler has been awarded the Canadian Centennial Medal (1967) and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (1974).
‘Penny in the Dust’
‘Penny in the Dust’ treats a theme common in Ernest Buckler’s fiction, the painful subtleties of family relationships and the anguish of unarticulated love. It is the story of a strange bond of love between a father and his son, both of whom are unable to express their feelings for each other. The story begins on the day of the father’s funeral when his son lovingly remembers the childhood memories he has shared with his family, his sister and especially his father. The day brings to his mind in particular one incident which took place several years ago. His father had one day gifted him a shiny penny which he had longed for as a child. One day while he was playing with the penny, it fell from his hands and slipped into the dust. The frightened child thought that he had lost the penny forever and hid himself in a hiding place. He was completely unaware of the fact that his absence for a long period of time made his parents anxious and nervous. His father ran to and fro frantically searching for the child and getting more and more anxious with every passing minute. Ultimately, it was his mother who discovered him and took him back home. The next day his father wanted to know the reason for such behaviour and the child thought that even if he explained, his father would not understand. But, to his surprise, his father attentively listened to his story, took him to the exact spot where the penny was lost and without much difficulty soon recovered the penny. From that day onwards, his father kept the penny to himself. The child’s fancy with the penny was over but his father’s was not. He kept the penny in his vest pocket till his last day when his son discovered it while taking him to his funeral. The penny was as shiny and bright as ever. It remained the symbol of love and affection that the father and son shared for each other and that which none of them could express to the other.
Mordecai Richler (1931-2001)
Mordecai Richler was born in Montreal in a Jewish community and raised on St. Urbain street. He worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and moved to London for work. In 1972, he returned to Montreal and worked as a journalist. Richler has written a number of short stories, essays, travelogues, film scripts and fiction for children. His celebrated works include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and St .Urbain’s Horseman (1971).
‘Benny’
‘Benny’ is set in St. Urbain street, a typical setting for Mordecai Richler’s works. It was a place populated by the Jews of Canada and the community had a particular characteristic of their own. Benny was the youngest son of the Garber family, a simple and dull boy who was not sure about whatever he wanted to do in life. In his youth Benny first joined the army and went to Europe during the Second World War. After the war, he returned with an injury about which none of his family members were ever aware. Benny was extraordinarily quiet though at times he behaved ridiculously strange. His elder brother took him as a mechanic in his garage and Benny was a sincere worker there. It was only when it rained that he used to lock himself up in a bathroom and remain there until the rain stopped. His behaviour was irrational and unexplained. No one including his parents had any great hopes on Benny, though his father liked to compare him with the son of neighbour Shapiro and say that Benny was nothing compared to “Shapiro’s boy”. Yet, that stupid Benny one day decided to marry Bella, the daughter of the local barman. Bella had a defect in her foot by birth and was singularly unattractive. Thus, everyone thought that the marriage between Bella and Benny was a perfect one. They seemed to enjoy a happy conjugal life and after sometime Bella declared that she would like to be a mother and before that she would first like to cure herself. She explained that she had been to Dr. Shapiro’s clinic where she had been assured that her foot shall be completely cured. The next morning Benny fell ill and when Bella returned with a doctor, they found him already dead. It was Dr. Shapiro who declared him dead possibly without knowing that it was he who was the reason for Benny’s annoyance with life. Since his childhood, Benny has been compared to Shapiro in every field – studies, career, marriage. Thus, when Benny found out that his wife had consulted Shapiro to cure her, he felt that he could not tolerate it anymore. His father had, throughout his life, compared him to Shapiro and now his wife wanted to depend on him to make their life happy. Therefore Benny decided to quit the competition in which he knew he was no match for his opponent.
Gabrielle Roy (1909-1983)
Gabrielle Roy was born in Manitoba and settled in Quebec, post the Second World War as a sketch artist. She was a teacher and many of her short stories are based on her personal experiences as a school teacher. Gabrielle Roy is one of the most significant Francophone writers in Canada. Bonheur d’Occasion (The Tin Flute), 1945, was her first novel. Her other novels include Rue Deschambault (Street of Riches), 1945, and Ces enfants de ma Vie (Children of my Heart), 1977. La Maison Gabrielle Roy is a museum in the childhood home of the author in St. Boniface, Manitoba.
‘The Dead Child’
‘The Dead Child’ is the first person account of a school teacher who had just arrived in a very small village in Manitoba as a substitute teacher. The students there belonged to extremely poor Metis families. As the new teacher called out their names on her first day in class, she realized how weary the faces of these children were. They looked much older and experienced than their ages. Poverty and hardship of life have made them grave and mature. Gradually she came to the name Yolande Chartrand to which no one responded. As she called out the name again, a voice declared, “she’s dead”. This matter-of-fact announcement astonished the teacher who was at a loss for appropriate words. The children, who had been very quiet till now, continued that she is being readied for her funeral. The teacher realized that the expression in the eyes of these children had been so long mistaken by her. What she mistook for indifference was actually a heavy sadness. She declared that as her teacher (though she missed the opportunity of teaching the girl) and her classmates, all of them should go to Yolande’s house and bid her farewell for the last time. Accordingly, after school, the whole class guided their new teacher to Yolande’s hut where the dead child lay. The family was so poor that they could not afford to lay the child on a bed, but as an ultimate gesture her parents had gone to buy her a clean sheet of cloth. The teacher arranged her students to pick flowers and place them over the body. They also recounted tales of how Yolande was as a child. She was a pretty girl who loved books, and looked beautiful in her dresses. She was someone who could have grown up into a beautiful young girl and who now looked like a tremendous waste of potential. The children formed a ring round the girl and decorated her with flowers. As they did so, they considered that she must be happy by now. She was one of those children who had had very few moments of joy in her lifetime. The incident made a deep impact on the teacher who remembered it for a long, long time. Yolande was not a case of exception, she was one of those children who succumbed to tuberculosis as a result of poor living conditions and malnutrition in those parts of the country.
Susanna Moodie (1803-1885)Susanna Moodie was born in Suffolk, England. She migrated to Canada with her husband in 1832 and settled in the north of Peterborough. Moodie’s writings had been published mainly in England for British readers who enjoyed her antipathy towards Canada and her native customs. Roughing it in the Bush (1852) was published in the form of memoir in England in which she wrote about her dislike for many of the Canadian customs. She has also written poems and a children’s book called Spartacus (1822).
‘The Charivari’
‘The Charivari’ is more of a documentation of a particular custom in Canada than a short story. It was a custom which originated from the French in the Lower Province of Canada. According to the custom, when an old man married a young wife, or a woman a young husband, all the young people of the neighbourhood raided their house and demanded money. The custom was also applicable if two old people married for the second of third time. The young people of the nighbourhood painted their faces and proceeded to the place where the wedding is held with instruments creating violent sounds. If the bridegroom refused to meet their demands, they made such horrible commotion and hurled such abuses at him that he was made to give up. This story is from the perspective of the author Susanna Moodie herself who was frightened by a terrible commotion one night while her husband was away. It was her neighbour, Mrs. O, who explained to her the source of the noise and told her everything about the custom. She even recounted several tales in which this apparently comical customs had turned fatal and taken peoples’ lives.
Usually, it was a matter of simple bargain and older men were generally let off gently if they paid up. But there had been an instance of a black man marrying a white woman where the man was picked up from his house on the night of his marriage and beat up so brutally that he died. The incident had been referred to as an accident and no one had ever been punished for the crime. There was also another weird incident. An old woman had once married a much younger man and had been the victim of the local fellows. Every evening, they gathered before her house and created nuisance by playing loud music, drinking and abusing the lady and even burning her effigy. The lady, instead of protest, seemed to welcome them. This continued for some time and one day she invited the leader of this party of young men to tea in her house. It was to the tremendous embarrassment of this young man that the ridiculous ritual began dot a seven o’clock while he sat drinking tea in her sitting room. To his dismay, the lady declared that her husband and she enjoyed their evening tea with these abuses as their background music and that they would feel lonely without the commotion. From the next day onwards, the band was dismantled and the lady and her husband were left in peace. Thus the lady managed to deal with the situation very tactfully.
Mrs. O asserted that however disgraceful the custom of charivari was, its intention was actually well meaning. It wanted to stop people from making wrong moves and disgraceful marriages. Thus, it was not wholly without any use. However, from Moodie’s point of view, it was one of the queer customs of Canada, a land to which she was yet to become familiar.
Clark Blaise (1940-)
Clark Blaise was born in North Dakota. He is a graduate in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. It was at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he met Bharati Mukherjee for the first time and they got married and eventually settled in Canada in 1966. Blaise has been the director of the international writing program at the University of Iowa. His famous works include A North American Education (1973), Tribal Justice (1974), Lunar Attractions (1979), Man and his World (1992). His autobiography I Had a Father was published in 1993. He has co-authored Days and Nights in Calcutta (1977) and The Sorrow and the Terror: the Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (1987) with Bharati Mukherjee.
‘Going to India’
‘Going to India’ is a semi-autobiographical narrative about an American man going on a holiday to India, his wife’s ancestral home. Readers of this story should be aware that in reality the writer, Clark Blaise, was married to Bharati Mukherjee who hailed from India and that he had actually co-authored a book called Days and Nights in Calcutta with his wife. In this story, the writer expresses his anxiety and anguish as he prepares himself for his impending trip to India, a place which is completely alien to him. The story begins with premonitions of death which, in a way, reflect his tense state of mind. He has been preparing himself for the trip for a very long time. His wife, Anjali Chatterjee, was his only source of gathering some idea about the country. She had been excommunicated from the Indian community in Indiana for marrying him and, at that point of time, he had not bothered himself about any repercussions or future consequences. His wife’s parents, unable to alter their daughter’s choice, had accepted him unwillingly as their son-in-law. But he had never actually thought at the time of his marriage what it would feel like visiting the country which was so familiar to his wife and which was completely alien to him. At the time of his marriage what he had felt was that he was marrying an individual person, and not a culture. However now when preparations are being made to visit India, the fact that he is being confronted with so many unknown things annoys him and frightens him to a great extent.
Primarily it was lineage that concerned him. What was a matter of no consequence in America assumed supreme significance in India. Born in a fractured family and brought up without any family ties, he had no concern whatsoever with family obligations which mattered so much in India.
As a foreigner, the writer/ narrator also expected something exciting and interesting or out of the way to happen in that trip. Aware of the fact that like an Orientalist he was keen on exoticizing India he could not but help doing precisely that. He was anxious of having to deal with beggars and servants and was deep inside apprehensive of how he would react to wife dealing with them. In fact, he was apprehensive of seeing his wife become a different person as she enters her own territory.
In the flight he discovers that the pilot was familiar to his wife and that, in fact, marriage had once been arranged between them before she met him. This trivial incident makes him realize once again that he actually knew very little about the person he lives with and that her exoticism still continues to haunt him. After the long flight, finally they arrive in Bombay and as they check out from the airport, the narrator still feels he is not ready to face India.
The story is not on Canada, but on India from the perspective of a white Canadian. How he views India in turn shapes his personality as a Canadian. His sense of rootlessness and lack of identity are characteristic of a white Canadian who is never sure where to place himself. India, huge and menacing, confronts him as a great obstacle between him and his wife. With a very prim and proper lineage and identity of her own, she can never share his anxiety nor can even understand it. Their son is a mere child, unaware of what he would face when he would grow up as the “outcast child of a mlechha husband”. Thus, in a sense, this story gives the readers a different perspective of Canada and presents a first person point of view from the ‘other’ side.
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References
- Hoy, Helen ed. Modern English-Canadian Prose: A Guide to Information Sources. Michigan: Gale, 1983.
- Klinck, Carl F ed. Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English. Second edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976
- Kroller, Eva-Marie ed. The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004
- New, W.H. ed. Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002
- Toye, William ed. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001