****
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
****
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
****
Your family has such a fascinating story, Bill, and so does the area where you grew up. What richness there is in your family's history! I can easily see how you connected with Flora's life on the prairie especially at that time, and I can understand how you would be drawn to read on and finish the book. Thank you both for sharing your correspondence with the rest of us; it's given me a fascinating perspective, both on history and on the novel.
ReplyDelete