From the Bookshelf of CanLit Challenge…

Over Prairie Trails

Frederick Philip Grove,

Patrick Lane (Afterword)

Start date: January 2, 2012

Finish date: February 1, 2012

Discussion: CanLit Challenge 1914-1938

Discussion leader: Ibis3

Why we're reading this: Book #55.
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CanLit Challenge 1914-1938

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What Members Thought

Aug 02, 2010 Ibis3 rated it really liked it

Shelves: nature, canadian, twentieth-century, 2012-favourites, manitoba, cl-lifetime, 2012, cl-2012, nonfiction, travel

I loved this book. My loving of this book amused me immensely.* Basically, it's 150 pages describing snow. And the wind, and the sky, but mostly snow. I was thrilled at the description of every swirl, every drift, every crystal, because it was all so familiar. I've never lived in the prairies, but I've lived in Edmonton and Ottawa and I've seen the winter in all of its forms. I've waited for the bus for an hour in -40 windchill. I've walked to the store and to work against the wind and in a bliz I loved this book. My loving of this book amused me immensely.* Basically, it's 150 pages describing snow. And the wind, and the sky, but mostly snow. I was thrilled at the description of every swirl, every drift, every crystal, because it was all so familiar. I've never lived in the prairies, but I've lived in Edmonton and Ottawa and I've seen the winter in all of its forms. I've waited for the bus for an hour in -40 windchill. I've walked to the store and to work against the wind and in a blizzard. One day when I was 8 I missed the school bus and my friend and I decided to walk--probably about 45 minutes, part of the way through a field with metre-high drifts. It was one of those cold, cold Edmonton days with no moisture in the air and the wind driving around carrying tiny glints of ice every which way. I'm surprised I didn't freeze any body parts off (I'd given my scarf to my friend and was making do with my hood in front of my face). I've had my eyelashes frozen together more times than I can count. I can't say I enjoy it exactly, but, like Grove, I relish it. Winter ought to be risky and uncomfortable, dazzling and yet prematurely dark. Your wrists and ankles should ache when the snow creeps into your mittens or over the tops of your boots. Roads should be, at least once or twice a season, icy or unploughed with visibility non-existent. Going out should involve twenty minutes of bundling up in half a dozen layers.

We've had hints of the Canadian winter before--in sleighing trips in The History of Emily Montague and The Man from Glengarry, Christmas on the farm in The Mountain and the Valley, the unforgettable blizzard in the aftermath of the Halifax explosion in Barometer Rising, the snowball thrown by Boy Staunton in Fifth Business--but those were like the early December snowfalls which come but melt away before you can get your toque out of the closet. Over Prairie Trails is late January--winter through and through.

These two excerpts from Patrick Lane's afterword explain what all of this means with respect to the CanLit canon:

Over Prairie Trails is an archetypal book. It encapsulates the essence of the Canadian experience, the violence and beauty and severity of its seasons. Alden Nowlan, the quintessential Canadian poet, once said that Canadians live in a country where simply to go outside is to risk death. He was speaking of our winter, that most unique and ubiquitous of our seasons. The cold and snow of our long winter separate us from other nations and other cultures and distinguish us from them. In the heart of a Canadian winter the world is changed. It becomes immutable, transformed into a kind of silence, stark and exquisitely beautiful. It isolates us, stripping us of everything but ourselves.

For Grove winter becomes a metaphor for our Canadian lives, a symbol of our struggle in the wilderness. For Grove, to engage in that struggle is not simply an act of survival, rather it is a celebration of his ability to confront and endure.

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*I kept wanting to share with my mother who absolutely hates reading description. I kept telling her how much she would hate this book since that's all it is. Too bad I couldn't get her to agree to listen to me read any of it. ...more

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Dec 30, 2011 CluckingBell rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 3-stars, on-my-nook, can-lit-challenge, author-canadian

After the first couple essays, the author spends a lot of time talking about snow and snow drifts (and much of the book is weather-centric). His natural curiosity is endearing, but the detailed observations can wear a little thin for a modern reader who’s been able to see both Antarctica and the North Pole on TV her whole life. But as he says in his essays, he’s writing these primarily for his wife and daughter, and his devotion to his daughter specifically and his desire to see her learn about ...more

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