Her Majesty The Queen Investigates - A Three Dog Problem by S.J. Bennett

(42. - 1285.) Her Majesty The Queen Investigates - A Three Dog Problem by S.J. Bennett - Sir Simon Holcroft, the Queen’s Private Secretary, finds a Palace housekeeper, Mrs. Cynthia Harris, dead beside the pool in Buckingham Palace.

The staff at Buckingham Palace are trained, more accurately drilled, not to bother “the Boss”, Queen Elizabeth, with issues related to the staff. When a “spate of poison pen stuff” is directed to women working at the Palace she is not advised. As Sir Simon formally advises Captain Rosemary Oshodi, informally known as “Rozie”, who is the Queen’s Assistant Private Secretary, “our job is to come up with solutions”. The “poison pen stuff” is “undermining the ‘happy ship’ “ that is the Palace and its staff.

An exception on bothering the Boss is made for the death of Mrs. Harris.

When the normally unshakeable Sir Simon is rattled the Queen orders him home:

“… You’ll be useless to me here.” She said it sharply, not to be unkind but because she knew he wouldn’t leave unless she made him, and he was in no fit state to work.

Rozie is a wonderful character. She served in the British Army in Afghanistan. She is tall, strong and intelligent. Her mother, Grace, is unhappy Rozie is single.

Detective Chief Inspector, David Strong, is assigned to investigate the posion pen letters. The working hypothesis on Mrs. Harris is that she died by accident.

Master Mike Green of Buckingham Palace is dismayed by the police being involved. 

The Queen has a keen mind. She is thinking constantly about matters great and small. She makes suggestions and requests. It is best to carry them out forthwith. 

At the same time, Queen Elizabeth has a wry sense of humour. While sitting for a sculptor working on a bronze bust of her there is a crew filming the sitting:

There really should be someone recording the filming, the Queen mused, just to round the whole thing off. Or someone to write about the recording of the filming of the sketching … ad infinitum. She was used to being watched and used, by now, to being such a source of fascination that her watchers were watched too.

The Queen, keenly attuned to the Palace, senses all is not well with the ‘happy ship” for more reasons than the wicked communications. 

The investigation sets the Queen to thinking:

For years, it had been the Queen’s habit to take a few dogs for a walk in the grounds if she had a big problem to consider.

The death of Mrs. Harris and the poisoned pen communications are a three dog (Willow, Candy and Vulcan) problem.

If the death of Mrs. Harris was not accidental, what could be the motive? That she was nosy and sharp to other staff seems an inadequate reason.

Inspector Armstrong is derisively given the nickname “Bogroll” (.... loo paper ‘soft, strong and very long’) by the staff.

The Queen directs the investigation with suggestions and remarks. Staff know her “if you would be so kind” requests are direct orders. Like Nero Wolfe she is unlikely to directly interview anyone.

Rozie, always eager to go above and beyond, goes beyond the Queen’s directions. Initiative can be dangerous.

Information comes in slowly. Who is feared more than H.M.?

I had not thought about Remembrance Day from the Queen’s perspective. In addition to laying the most important wreath in the realm she has grieved with the survivors of the fallen for 64 years at the time of the book. She is also a veteran of WW II.

I found myself absorbed in life at the Palace and the mystery plot. Bennett has skilfully conceived a book which very plausibly features a mystery set at Buckingham Palace involving the Royal Family. The mystery was intricate and subtle but never obscure. Queen Elizabeth is presented as a bright astute woman. I am going to have to read more in the series.

The Black Loch by Peter May

(41. - 1284.) The Black Loch by Peter May - May returns to the Isle of Lewis which he brilliantly explored in the Lewis trilogy a decade ago. 

Detective Sergeant George Gunn is called to investigate the death of a lov
ely young teenager, Caitlin Black, who has fallen to her death from a clifftop along the rocky shore. She was pregnant. She had gained fame for videos she and a friend made about “exploring the coastline of the islands from the sea”.

Gunn is resisting retirement despite the entreaties of his wife. He is slowing physically.

Fin McLeod has left his position in security for a large estate on the island and is working in Glasgow on a computer seeking out the sites of child pornographers for criminal prosecution.

Fin, now past 50, is also aging with “his once-blond curls thinning now and turning quietly silver”.

Fin and his wife, Marsaili, return to Lewis when their son, Fionnlagh, has been charged with murdering Caitlin. 

They are shattered. They cannot believe their son is a murderer though his relationship with Caitlin was scandalous.

Detective Chief Inspector, Douglas Mclaren, is leading the investigation. Gunn describes him as a “clever bastard”.

Marsaili says Fin has a duty to prove Fionnlagh is innocent. He recalls his grandfather’s words:

You bring someone into this world, Fin, you have to be there for them. No matter what.

Caitlin was the daughter of Fin and Marsaili’s high school classmates, Niall and Ailsa (Maclean) Black. 

Fin’s thoughts turn to his late teens when he joined Niall and other boys in a disastrous illegal venture. A pact of silence was made, uneasily on Fin’s part. It has haunted them for over 30 years.

Family responsibility is not limited to your own children. He reflects on his Aunt who raised him from a young boy through his teens after the death of his parents. While single and ill-equipped to be a parent she took on his care.

Fin meets with Aisla and Niall who are long separated. It is hard for them to disassociate the sins of the son from the parents. The conversations are credibly hard.

Fin wonders “whether it was worse to lose your daughter or have your son accused of her murder”. I know my answer.

In his efforts to prove his son innocent Fin seeks out conversations with all who knew Caitlin. If not his son, who had a motive to hurt and kill the beautiful Caitlin? Fin has no difficulty confronting those he believes are not being truthful to him.

Salmon farming is now a big business in Lewis. There are 1.2 million salmon in the 12 cages of the farm Niall’s company owns. They have cages “all over Scotland”. Is there a connection to the industrial salmon farming operation of Niall? Evidence is being assembled about the profound environmental issues of the operation. 

Fin is a hard man. The flinty Calvinism of his youth in the Crobost Free Church is still present in him in his middle age. While he has rejected the Church there is still an Old Testament attitude about him. He decries the current pastor, a childhood friend, as self-righteous but Fin is just as judgmental. 

Forgiveness is rare in the Hebrides. The admonition of Jesus to forgive is not a common part of Lewis life.

The investigation does drive Fin to be reflective about his mortality. He is nearer the grave than birth. He finds himself depressed as he reviews his life. Regrets are hard to overcome for the uncompromising.

Relationships ache through The Black Loch. Most have suffered great losses. Marsaili recalls being told by her first mother-in-law:

No one should expect to be happy, Marsaili.

None of the characters, young and old, are happy.

The Black Loch is fine Celtic noir but grim. I did wish there was at least a touch of joy in the Hebrides.

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May, Peter - (2003) - Snakehead; (2014) - The Blackhouse; (2014) - The Lewis Man; (2015) - The Chessmen; Bookmark Inspiration for the Outer Hebrides; (2020) - Firemaker; (2020) - The Fourth Sacrifice

Finding Flora (Part II) by Elinor Florence

In my last post I put the first part of a letter to Elinor Florence on excellent book, Finding Flora. Today is the rest of the letter and Elinor's response. I appreciate her reply. A link to the first post is below.)

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I appreciated that Flora and her neighbours, Miss Edgar and Wren, were literate women reading newspapers and books.

Their literary interests and Flora being a woman homesteader led me to think of the Traills, the founding family of Meskanaw where I grew up. The father, William Traill, had been a Hudson Bay trader until he retired and homesteaded in the late 1890’s. When it was time for a post office the other settlers decided to name the community Traill in his honor. Because there was already Traill, British Columbia, they chose Maskunow for the name but the post office administration changed the spelling to Meskanaw. The settlers chose not to challenge the revised spelling. Meskanaw means trail in Cree.

William had a large family with several daughters. Annie, Mary and Hattie never married. I was told Annie studied agriculture at Guelph. Mary became a nurse.

After William died in 1917 and his wife, Harriet, died in 1920 the unmarried daughters, collectively known as the “Aunts”, took over the farm. 

As set out in the family story in Meskanaw’s history book, Meskanaw: Its Story and Its People (Book 1) Aunt Annie “who had always done a man’s work with her father, was the farmer”. She farmed their three quarters of land with the aid of a hired man. (One of the quarters was in Aunt Mary’s name.)

Aunt Hattie took care of the house until her death in 1930. 

The Aunts, with a widowed Aunt Barbara who returned to the farm after her husband’s death, carried on with the farm for over 30 years. 

Aunt Mary tended to the medical needs of the community and surrounding area.

As far as I know the Aunts farming experiences were different from Flora. Unlike the grave prejudice experienced by Flora, the Aunts were loved and respected in our community.

My father, Hans, spoke fondly of the Aunts. They lived just over a mile from him. Flora’s story of successfully shooting a partridge reminded me of a story he told me involving Aunt Annie in the 1930’s.

She called him on the phone and asked him to be ready to come if she called him without asking questions. He agreed. A few days later the call came. When he arrived he found Aunt Annie had shot a deer and was asking for his help dressing the animal. About a week later she told him she had found another dead deer. She had killed two deer with one shot.

As with Flora the Aunts had a Boer War connection. Their brother, Willie, served in the war and several of his comrades returned with him to homestead at Meskanaw.

Aunt Mary, Aunt Annie and Aunt Barbara left Meskanaw in the early 1950’s as they reached their senior years. Aunt Annie died in Victoria in 1977 at 88. Aunt Mary died in 1984. She was 101. Aunt Barbara died in Melfort at 98 in 1990.

The only other woman farmer I know of was in the area of Melfort. Frances McAusland was left in charge of the farm when her husband, William Crawford McAusland, took off for the Klondike. 

She successfully farmed for 7 years and also operated businesses in Melfort. I was told she was not excited when William Crawford, after no communications for 7 years, abruptly returned to the farm from the North.

The Aunts came from a famed literary family. Their grandmother was Catharine Parr Traill, the Ontario writer who wrote 24 books, most about settling in the wilds of Ontario in the early 1830’s. She had been a Strickland before marrying and had four sisters who were authors in England. Her best known book is Backwoods of Canada.

The Aunts’ father and their uncle, Walter, wrote long letters home to their mother. A collection of the Aunts’ father’s letters were published as the Fur Trade Letters of Willie Traill - 1864-1893. Two books, In Rupert’s Land and Dawn Across Canada, were assembled by Mae Atwood, using Walter’s letters. The Traill’s form part of the great literary heritage of Meskanaw. I can tell you more another time.

I am not aware of anyone publishing letters the Aunts would have written.

It took indomninable will for Flora to be a homesteader. I was swept into her life desperately wanting her to succeed against the formidable foes and odds she faced. I had known some of the challenges for women wanting to farm in the early 1900’s but not the depth of social and legal prejudice until reading Finding Flora.

It has been some time since I read late into the night, compelled to finish a book. I completed Finding Flora after midnight sitting in our stateroom aboard the Marina, an Oceania cruise ship, sailing north from Athens towards Croatia.

I appreciated Flora’s love of the land of Western Canada. The beauty of spring on the prairies after the harshness of winter has to be lived to be understood. 

I felt in the book your connection to the land of your youth near North Battleford. I own the quarter Grandfather Carl homesteaded and plan to own it the rest of my days and hope our sons will want to own it for their lifetimes.

I wish you would consider making Flora’s life into a saga of multiple books. I think there are abundant storylines you could follow for her life and beyond. In the early 1970’s I loved the sagas of R.F. Delderfield, an English writer, who wrote several series that spanned lives and sometimes generations.

I described Anthony Bidulka’s book, Going to Beautiful, a mystery set in rural Saskatchewan as his masterpiece. I consider Finding Flora your masterpiece. As Anthony captured the experience of life in rural Saskatchewan during my lifetime you have brought alive the experiences of homesteading, especially for a woman, in Western Canada.

I will be putting this letter into two posts for my blog. If you would like to comment on my letter and are willing to have your reply published I will also post it on my blog.

All the best.

Bill

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Elinor's reply:

Readers connect with Flora in different ways. Some feel inspired by the story about strong women surviving insurmountable odds. Some love the descriptions of the prairie landscape. Some admire the sense of community, neighbours coming together to help each other in times of trouble. Others appreciate the educational aspect, information about our country’s history that took place only two generations ago, and now largely forgotten.

But there is one group of readers who connect with the book in a way that is almost visceral — those descended from homesteaders. I have heard from many people who were deeply stirred by the story of what their ancestors experienced. You, Bill, are among them. Thank you for sharing the story of your own grandfather, who in many ways represents the homesteader experience.

The first settlers in Western Canada survived incredible hardships (and I use the word incredible literally, as their challenges are almost impossible to comprehend). They planted their roots deep into the prairie soil and laid the foundation for the Western Canada that we know and love so much today. I wanted to honour those people, and I’m grateful that you think I have done so. Elinor

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Finding Flora (Part I)

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Florence, Elinor - (2019) - Bird's Eye View and The Women of Meskanaw Who Went to War

Finding Flora (Part I) by Elinor Florence

(40. - 1283.) Finding Flora (Part I) by Elinor Florence - 

This post and my next post form a letter I wrote to the author.

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Dear Elinor,

Sometimes I write my review of a book in the form of a letter. It needs to be a special book. I found Finding Flora such a book. 

Reading of Flora’s experiences as a young woman homesteading in Alberta in 1905 brought back memories of my grandfather, Carl Selnes, homesteading at Meskanaw in Saskatchewan in 1907.

Flora had been a ladies maid in Scotland. Though uncertain and scared she was determined to make her way in Western Canada.

Grandfather Carl was a fisherman and subsistence farmer in the Lofoten Islands north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. He initially settled and homesteaded in South Dakota and then came north in 1907.

Flora takes the opportunity of buying two quarters, 320 acres of land, from a Boer War nurse who is entitled to scrip (the right to homestead land) as a veteran. As a single woman - she does not reveal her marriage - she would not have been entitled to homestead.

Grandfather Carl, having already farmed in the U.S., knew to focus on the quality of the land rather than having bush and a water supply. Our family quarter at Meskanaw is excellent land.

Flora was in a long queue, almost all men, at the homestead office in Red Deer to file her claim.

Grandfather Carl filed in Melfort. Another man, Sam McCloy filed on the same quarter on the same day in Prince Albert. McCloy had priority by filing in the head office. McCloy said Grandfather Carl had come a long way to find a homestead and graciously relinquished his claim in favour of Grandfather Carl.

I wondered how Flora would start the process of farming with barely any equipment and less knowledge of farming. The assistance of neighbours to her reflects the co-operative spirit of farm life on the prairies in which I grew up two generations later.

While I was growing up at Meskanaw a farmer fell ill one summer and another, a few years later, died in a farm accident. Both years neighbours interrupted their harvests to join together to harvest the fields of the injured and the deceased.

Grandfather Carl had the advantage of having acquired equipment and experience in farming. He brought his equipment and horses north by rail.

It was daunting and lonely for Flora to homestead as a single woman. She had fled from a brief marriage to an abusive husband.

Grandfather Carl had married in South Dakota. His wife, Anna Marie, came with him. Their son, my father Hans, was born in 1911. 

As with Flora’s neighbour, Peggy, Grandmother Anna Marie drove her horse, Old Joe, to Kinistino to trade eggs and butter for groceries. 

Unfortunately, Grandmother Anna Marie died in 1914 from complications related to childbirth. Grandfather Carl never re-married. 

Flora, walking across the prairie, shortly after settling to meet her neighbours was mirrored by Grandfather Carl. To his amazement, when he knocked on the door of his neighbour, he was greeted by Martin Hanberg, a man he had gone to school with in the Lofotens. Neither knew the other had homesteaded in Saskatchewan.

Flora swiftly learned to harvest the wild berries - saskatoons, cranberries, chokecherries, pincherries and strawberries - that abounded. I can remember as a boy going to pick saskatoons. They were bursting with flavour.

Our harsh winters are a shock to most Europeans. The temperature plunging to -40C can only be understood through enduring the cold. There were many settlers like Flora who thought existing settlers were exaggerating the cold they would experience.

Grandfather Carl actually moved north from South Dakota partially because of the weather. Having lived in a cold climate in the Lofotens though the temperatures were not as extreme as Saskatchewan he could handle the minus 40’s of Saskatchewan better than the plus 40’s of South Dakota summers.

I had not thought of how hard it was to navigate in the winter with only barely marked trails. Flora being caught in a winter storm while driving her wagon and horses home was powerfully described. Our family has no comparable stories.

The stories of homesteaders in Flora’s area giving up and moving on resonated with me. Two men had homesteaded before Grandfather Carl on our quarter. The first, a single man, whose family was about 30 miles away was overcome by loneliness and returned home. On the homestead records of our quarter the second said he was surrendering the homestead because all his horses had died of swamp fever.

I admired the incredible efforts Flora made to improve her quarter. I have copies of Grandfather Carl’s homestead documents. They humble me when I see the improvements he made to qualify for the title to his quarter.

In my work as a lawyer I have worked on land claims for indigenous bands. Two of them, Chakastaypasin and Peter Chapman, lost land through fraud orchestrated by officials of the Government of Canada. The wicked Frank Oliver portrayed in the book was just as unscrupulous.