…The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling…

Alberta and Saskatchewan

The plot of Robert Kroetsch‘s Badlands follows the last letter and field journals that paleontologist William Dawe have left to his daughter Anna about his journey down the Red Deer River and into the Badlands in search of the fossilized remains of dinosaurs still skeletally intact. Anna retraces her father’s steps and encounters many of the characters with whom he worked and learns many the truths and lies of her father’s life. As required reading for one of my Can. Lit. courses in university, this book was incredibly painful to get through. But as a description of one of the most beautiful places in Canada, it is awesome. Visit www.canadianbadlands.com to see the photos that go with the description, "The Canadian Badlands embrace many unusual landscapes, eroded badlands, big sky prairies, coulees, sand dunes and soaring hills."

My initial introduction to Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell was via Mr. Lavery in Grade 10 English. I HATED it. It was a painful read, made even more so by an essay on symbolism I spent writing over a Thanksgiving weekend while everyone else enjoyed a last Indian summer at the cottage. The year I graduated from university, one of my closest friends, who has a brain I greatly admire, told me that WHSW was his favourite book of all time. Incredulous, I gave Brian O’Connal, the Young Ben and the sweeping wheat and dew drops another chance and found it to be  passable. Not a favourite by any means, but much better than my original go-round. So much so, I wrote my teacher a letter announcing my late appreciation of a novel about which he could scarcely forget my very vocal displeasure. When I challenged my friend to the idea that this was his favourite he insisted I had had too much sambucca on the night in question and that Who Has Seen the Wind was never one of his faves, rather it was How I Spent My Summer Holidays! Whether it is one of these, or Jake and the Kid or any other W.O. Mitchell classic, throughout these stories of adventure maturity and coming of age the hot sun beats down on the vast fields of wheat and prairie grass as the wind rustles along the tops and the only places for respite are the small town watering holes and a cold pop at the main street diner.

Joy Kogawa drew me even closer to an understanding of the vastness of the praire landscape and

the wheat through her protagonist in Obasan. In the wake of Pearl Harbour, young Japanese Canadian, Naomi, had been removed from her home in Pearl Harbour and dispersed to Saskatchewan. Sick for her home and her family she stares out at the endless miles of wheat undulating in the prairie wind and equates it to the view of the sea she has known, loved and lost.

Finally, if you need a little more prairie in your life, Sinclair Ross’ As For Me and My House is set in a

‘Main Street’ town during the Depression. It is the journal of Mrs. Bentley, the very lonely wife of the town preacher who has more failings than successes in this very Canadian story of desperation, isolation and hardship.

Next round in the "This Land is Your Land, this Land is My Land’ series is Manitoba.  Suggestions are always welcome and feel free to add to this list!