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.

Why Do We Do What We Do?

Fifty years after graduating from law school is a good time for reflection. In the past couple of weeks I thought about why I became a lawyer. My reflection was prompted by reading The Katharina Code by Jørn Lier Horst in which Norwegian Chief Inspector William Wistering is asked by a neighbour, Martin Haugen, about his choice of career.

On why we do what we do Wistering says:

“I enjoy it,” he replied. “I like to think I contribute to bringing about justice. When someone takes another person’s life, they have to know someone will come after them and hold them accountable. If no one did this job, then we’d have a society where the rights of the strongest would prevail.”

His comment brought to mind Harry Bosch’s motto “everybody counts or nobody counts”. In an article in the Chicago Tribune in 2012 Michael Connelly speaks about the phrase: 

"The reality is that detectives are not always investigating the murders of their girlfriends or people they know," says Connelly, who took up writing crime after several years as a police reporter at the Los Angeles Times, in an interview. "They have to make impersonal cases personal, and I gave Harry that ability. He comes to a crime scene, and his client, if you will, is dead. It's the unfairness of what's happened to that person that makes him angry, and gives him that relentless drive to find out what happened and zero in on whoever was responsible. As he always says, everybody counts or nobody counts."

A link to my post on “everybody counts or nobody counts” is below.

Wistering then provided a more personal reason for becoming and staying a police officer:

“What’s more, I think it’s exciting,” Wisting added. “I could easily have said I became a policeman because I wanted to make the world a better place, to make a difference, but when all is said and done, it’s really because of a fascination with serious crimes.” 

I became a lawyer not for any grand ambitions about justice or making the world a better place. It was because I did not want to be a teacher or be employed by the government. Those seemed to be the jobs available with a history degree. Even in the 1970’s I sensed there were more people with Master’s and Ph.D’s in History than were employable using their degrees. I had marks good enough to get into law school and thought it could be interesting. 

When I started law school I realized I liked the challenges of law - its interpretation and application. 

When I started articling and then working as a lawyer in private practice the words of Wistering above applied to me.

I liked using the law to help people.

I found going to court exciting. I have always loved sports. Going to court was a new type of competition. I know few litigators who are not competitive persons.

I have also enjoyed being a lawyer as the work is not routine. Certainly there is repetition but there is a continuing stream of new clients with problems and issues that are varied and often complex. 

I do not think I would have enjoyed a job where the work is the same from day to day, month to month, year to year.

I found driving a tractor on the farm as a teenager and young man the most boring job of my life. I found it hard to stay focused going up and down a field all day. At that time it was an open tractor and there was no ability to have a radio or cell phone or other electronic device on the tractor. Current tractors let the operators have communication.

Motivations for work a person choses come in so many different ways. I would be interested in hearing from readers on why you do what you do or why you did what you did. 

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Horst, Jørn Lier - (2025) - The Katharina Code

Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts

The Katharina Code by Jørn Lier Horst translated by Anne Bruce

(39. - 1282.) The Katharina Code by Jørn Lier Horst translated by Anne Bruce - Norwegian Chief Inspector William Wisting is reviewing the file of Katharina Haugen. It has been a year since he last looked at the file. Twenty-four years have passed since Katharina disappeared. He keeps hoping that “he would discover a detail he had previously overlooked, or spot a connection he had not made before”.

Most puzzling is a piece of paper found on her kitchen table. On the paper are “a series of numbers arranged along three vertical lines”. Police experts, military cryptologists and foreign experts have failed to solve what has been named “The Kaharina Code”.

Wisting carries on with life. He enjoys time with his daughter, Line, and his granddaughter, Amalie. Still he meets with Katharina's husband, Martin Haugen, each year on the anniversary of Katharina’s disappearance.

Why were there fourteen red roses in her house beside an ornament?

He looks for lies in the material:

Lies were an element of every investigation. Everyone lied. It was seldom a matter of downright untruths, but most people avoided the unvarnished truth in some way or another.

On this anniversary Martin is not at home and Wisting cannot find him.

Adrian Stiller from the Cold Case Unit of the Kripos - a special agency in the Norwegian Police Service - comes to the detachment to lead a new investigation into the kidnapping of Nadia Krogh who also disappeared. New technology has enabled the unit to find an important connection with Katharina’s case.

Wisting describes Martin as withdrawn and good-natured to Stiller.

Stiller, backed by senior officers, wants Wisting to become close to Martin and gain his confidence. He is to get Martin to confide in him.

Stiller is a manipulative man. Wanting a series of stories on Nadia’s kidnapping he arranges for Wisting’s daughter, Line, a journalist at the VG newspaper to be chosen to write the stories.

Wisting will have to keep secret from Line his investigation into Martin.

Thus there is a police task force re-investigating Nadia’s case and a VG team questioning individuals with personal knowledge of Nadia.

I found having the father, the detective, and the daughter, the journalist, investigating different parts of the same case fascinating.

I admire Wistering and the Norwegian police for getting authorization to do covert searches. Not for them the American way of fictional police breaking in because it is more expedient. The Norwegian way is just as efficient in solving crime and promotes respect for the law.

It is a wonderfully complex case.

As I read the book I thought about the cold cases of Harry Bosch. His careful thoughtful review of old police files would provide the break that led to resolution of the case. Wisting’s equally detailed examination of the files he knows so well and the consequences of a current domestic violence conviction lets him break open the case. That the break involves books was very clever. It was also very credible.

The police use a combination of electronics and personal contacts to build their case. 

The code is solved with careful thought. Its design was ultimately simple but unless you had the key impossible to decipher. It was a brilliant concept.

Tension builds as the police learn more of the past. Great secrets are hard to live with in fiction and real life.

Bruce's translation was excellent. The plot flowed.

I bought the book because it was the 2019 winner of the Petrona Award for Best Translated Scandinavian Crime Novel. Horst is a talented writer and I will read more of his work.

Widows and Orphans by Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti

(37. - 1280.) Widows and Orphans by Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti - Cat Conway is a reporter for the Quill and Packet newspaper in Port Ellis in the tri-lakes area of Ontario’s cottage country. She is covering the Welcome, Goddess wellness retreat where her mother, Marian, is talking on “work-life balance and avoiding burnout”.

Cat’s article on vaccine avoidance has brought out the very vocal anti-vaxers and complaints to advertisers of the newspaper. The paper is at risk. Those who dislike the paper call it the Shill and Racket. A group of them known as “the convoy” are camping out on the edge of the town. They had been ardent supporters of “The Convoy” that shut down Ottawa for weeks during Covid.

The conference is featuring the world’s best selling poet, Clarity K. She is a striking woman wearing a “flowing ivory cloak with an enormous hood” and “glowing silver hair surrounded a smooth, youthful face”. 

The cloak is made of the “plushest cashmere” which was ethically sourced from a small collective of women in Nepal. It is her Creativity Cocoon.

Marian is furious that an interviewer cancelled their interview about her new book, Grit and Gumption, to go to see Clarity K “giving an impromptu lesson in free verse in the Canoe Salon”.

Marian may be 72 but her energy abounds. She only eats carbs once a month and on her husband’s birthday. She was a management consultant, “cable news pundit on issues of gender and work” and a bestselling author on “midlife empowerment”.

Bliss and Bree founded Welcome, Goddess and post very popular podcasts. Bliss, at least, has succumbed to the health conspiracy theorists of the pandemic.

There is chaos at the retreat when Bliss is found dead at the base of a famed scenic lookout near the resort hosting the conference.

Another journalist from Cat’s paper interviews “weepers” - upset witnesses to a disturbing event.

Clarity hosts a group to SkyWord in memory of Bliss. It is an amazing scene. Participants light sparklers and spell out a message in the sky in the streaks of light created by the sparklers. Even more remarkable, with a camera you “can create still images from the long exposure setting and then use an app to flip them so that you can read them”.

Inspector Cheryl Bell is not one to engage in flights of fancy. (I borrow the phrase for this post from fellow blogger and friend, Margot Kinberg, who has used it in her blog for special, often whimsical, posts.) Bell is carefully assembling information from what happened on the night Bliss died.

Cat interviews Clarity after the death of Bliss. Clarity wants “to contribute to a healing dialogue” and get on record she “had no knowledge of the tragic events of the last few days”.

There is a frightening video circulated in which Cat is making wild threats against Mayor Gerry Halloran. She is shocked as she never made the threats. Fortunately, it is quickly exposed as a deepfake. We are entering a world where video is less and less reliable.

Though Cat is 45 her relationship with her mother is fraught with issues both past and present.

It turns out the Welcome, Goddess world has as much corporate intrigue and conflict as any other large business.

A white board is needed by the journalists at the Quill to list all the suspects.

There is constant irony, subtle sarcasm and wit through the book. 

It reminded me of the conference in Susan Juby’s book by subtly mocking current societal passions and Conor Kerr’s biting portrayal of the business of indigenous activism.

I was a little disappointed that the authors chose to describe characters from the “convoy” in unflattering physical terms. I appreciated that they do not spare the pretensions of the “wellness” advocates but they are attractive people.

Reading about the Quill & Packet was painful. I have witnessed the decline of a strong local newspaper to oblivion. I wrote for the Melfort Journal for 38 years. Now it is a free newspaper with barely a story on life in Melfort.

I enjoyed Widows and Orphans. It is a well written book that credibly examines issues related to wellness and science in the midst of a strong mystery. The ending is excellent. 

Glitter in the Dark by Olesya Lyuzna

(36. - 1279.) Glitter in the Dark by Olesya Lyuzna - New York City in the early 1920’s. Ginny Dugan has come from Kansas to make her mark on the world. Her sister, Dottie, is a leading Ziegfeld Follies performer.

Life is a blur for Ginny. Harlem speakeasies, Ample champagne and whiskey. Lovely bright dresses. Beautiful people. Late nights at clubs and parties. Starks’ Headache Powders early in the morning to ease hangovers and get her up to face the day at Photoplay where she works on her “advice” column. She prides herself on being on time to work every morning.

The Follies are the biggest show in the city. Young women from across America desperately want to be a Ziegfeld star.

We think life in the 21st Century is a rush. 1920’s New York City life rivals our time for filling days and nights with activity.

Ginny is determined to get a big story which will propel her into the lucrative ranks of famous journalists. 

She will risk her life for a scoop. Her virtue is long gone. Her integrity is shaky.

She has her flaws. She betrays relationships with affairs that are lacking in love.

Watching a famed singer, Josephine, being dragged from a Harlem club gives her chance for a scoop. She swiftly learns the dangers of asking unwanted questions.

She learns the hard way that:

Things can go south real fast …

Lyuzna is quick with colourful phrases. Ginny survived “the old bullet shower” when she tried to stop Josephine’s abduction.  

A determined but modestly successful private detective specializing in cheating husbands, Jack Crawford, wants to take over her case. His creased felt hat, drab suit and scuffed shoes define his status. He aspires to be a hard boiled detective.

Before there was fentanyl there was “pep powder”. An exhausted Ginny needing energy takes the “pep powder”. The drug gives her a jolt but it is extraordinarily dangerous. She knows no more about the drug than it is illegal and powerful. She has moved from alcohol and recreational marijuana to hard drugs.

Her addiction to taking risks is becoming reckless.

Ginny is fierce but physical confrontations with strong men go badly.

In a cynical city Ginny refuses to give up. She will find Josephine no matter the cost.

Yet how can she find the kingpin of the drug trade? Those who know refuse to tell her. She must know him. It has to be someone who is part of the music business.

Lyuzna keeps the story moving briskly. She is a talented writer who demonstrated her writing skills in the first 300 pages.

The climax was semi-Hollywood. I struggled with it. I expect a better finish to Lyuzna's next book.

Lyuzna created an incredible atmosphere in the book drawing the reader into the excitement and risks of 1920’s New York City. New York City glitters in the night but all that glitters is a facade.

I loved Ginny. She is a hard boiled dame without a gun.