The Image of the Prairies in Contemporary Canadian Juvenile Fiction

Abstract

The Image of the Prairies in Contemporary Canadian Juvenile Fiction Dave Jenkinson (bio) The Prairie region, consisting of the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, contains, according to the Canada Year Book 1988, "the largest tract of continuous settlement. . . north of the United States border" (1-5). While occupying just 6.2 percent of Canada's area (2-2), the Prairie region can boast 80 percent of the nation's farmland (9-3). Over the last three decades, the region has seen its share of Canada's population, some 17.6 percent, remain essentially unchanged; however, the distribution of that population continues to show significant modification (2-2). A century ago, when the first transcontinental railway line was completed, opening the West to greater agricultural settlement, 60 families out of every 100 were farm families, but "today, perhaps three or four Canadian families out of every 100 is [sic] a farming family" (Canada Year Book 1988 9-1). The continuing rural migration to urban areas is evidenced by population statistics. In 1961, 58 percent of the Prairie's population was characterized as urban with a further 18 percent being rural (non-farm) and 24 percent being rural (farm) (Canada Year Book 1965 165). By 1971, the urban portion had climbed to 67 percent while the remaining 33 percent was almost equally divided between rural (non-farm), 16 percent, and rural (farm), 17 percent (Canada Year Book 1976-77 189). The urban population share had increased to 71 percent in 1981, and the rural (non-farm) to 18 percent while the rural (farm) had decreased to just 11 percent, a 54 percent decline over two decades (Canada Year Book 1985 55). One of the effects of this ongoing diminution of the rural [End Page 201] population, especially the farm population, has been an increasing alienation of the majority of the prairie population from the "land." "Canada is rapidly leaving behind the days when a close acquaintance with the farming experience could be said to be typical of the majority of Canadians, either through direct on-farm living experience or through having living relatives with that experience" (Canada Year Book 1988 9-1). What emerges then from an examination of contemporary Canadian juvenile fiction that uses the Prairie region as its setting are a number of images of the tensions found in the prairie urban/rural dichotomy. Kurelek's pair of illustrated books, A Prairie Boy's Winter (1973) and A Prairie Boy's Summer (1975), are important to any examination of Canadian juvenile literature that utilizes prairie settings. With the exception of the cover art found on a smattering of novels, such as Matheson's Prairie Pictures (1989), Taylor's Julie (1985), and Collura's Winners (1984), Kurelek's prairie duet stands alone: these two books are the only juvenile titles published in the last two decades that offer a visual representation of the prairies. Because of the books' short length and their similarity in format to picture books, they may be the first books with a prairie setting which children meet. The books could, therefore, leave the impression that Kurelek's "prairies" are those that today's urban children would see and experience should they venture out to the "land." The prairies of the Thirties that Kurelek illustrated and wrote about, however, were just about to undergo a series of major changes. For example, Kurelek's illustrations portray horses as both an important method of transportation for people and the principal means of locomotion for farm implements. The 1940s, though, would mark the beginning of a time of rapid technological change on farms, with horses being rapidly replaced by tractors and other self-propelled implements. As well, many one-room rural schools, like the one attended by Kurelek, would be closed by educational jurisdictions opting for larger, more efficient plants offering a wider scope of educational options. Yet, even in Kurelek's nostalgic memories of his pre-teen years of the Thirties, the rural/urban division can still be found. In A Prairie Boy's Summer, Kurelek reveals that his father had promised him that, after passing grade nine, he would attend a high school "in the big city." Kurelek...