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Bezig met laden... River in a Dry Land: A Prairie Passage (2000)door Trevor Herriot
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Trevor Herriot's memoir and history of the Qu'Appelle River Valley has won the CBA Libris Award for First-Time Author, the Writers' Trust Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award, and the Regina Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)971.244History and Geography North America Canada Prairie Provinces, Western Canada SaskatchewanLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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Before reading this book I had no idea how extensive the Qu'appelle River was. I've travelled through what I now realize was just a small portion of the Valley and I thought it was beautiful. Now that I've read this book I want to explore more of it.
I imagine this book created something of a stir when it was first published. Herriot has decided views about how people should live on the prairies and it has nothing to do with agribusiness. In fact, he would be happy if people still lived as the natives did, moving with the seasons and the game. He sees how the land has been abandoned by the immigrant settlers and how modern farmers are losing touch with the earth.
I too have witnessed that. My father managed to feed a family on a half section of land, leaving river bottoms to be pasture for the cows and letting land lie fallow every few years. We had milk cows and horses and pigs and sheep and chickens so that there was always something to do even when there were no crops in the field. My mother kept a huge garden and sold eggs in town. We kids did farm chores from the time we were young. But my mother was also one of the first farm women I knew who took a job off the farm after a dry spell destroyed the crops. Three of the four children went off to university and never returned to the farm except for visits. The home I grew up in is owned by someone else although the land is still farmed by my nephews. But in order to make ends meet they have jobs off the farm, they no longer keep cattle except to sell and most of the river bottom land has been cleared for crops.
Reading this book made me long for those simpler days of my youth. When Herriot got to talking about his relatives he could have been describing mine. "Listening and taking pleasure in the cadence of their descriptives, rising and falling in talk of last night's storm, this fall's deer hunt, or the prospects for a wedding. An oozing sore was 'mattery,' calm was pronounced cam, the Palmers were the Pammers, and deer were always 'jumpers'." ( )