COMING TO GRIPS WITH WARLIKE HORRORS IN THE B.C. INTERIOR

Tale sees man dealing with past to make difference in present, says Bill Robertson.

Before the Vietnam War and subsequent conflicts brought Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to the attention of the public, there were the First World War and Second World War and the people who returned from them, often damaged in some way and, following the code of the times, unwilling to talk about it.

Patrick Lane — a former Saskatchewan resident — grew up in the British Columbia Interior and was the right age ( born 1939) to take in all the stories of death, destruction, and the walking wounded. He was raised amid hardscrabble, working poor and was often party to the poverty, violence and terror of hurt people pushed beyond their limits.

In his new novel, Deep River Night (McClelland & Stewart; $34), Lane tells a war story that happens in 1960 in the North Thompson River area of B.C. after those who were in a war think it’s over. Art Kenning is the first aid man at a lumber mill that his boss, Claude Harper, is running into the ground at the behest of a head office somewhere. Both men were in the European war together, Claude able to move on from the horror he witnessed and participated in, Art still in the Netherlands, Belgium or France, each of them indistinguishable from his version of B.C., depending on how much whiskey he’s drunk or opium he’s smoked.

He smokes with Wang Po, camp cook and survivor of the Rape of Nanking in the Asian theatre. He, too, survived many horrors, but as a Buddhist has moved on as best he can. Rounding out the cast of main characters is Joel Crozier, a boy who has run away from home to work with men. He has developed a sexual relationship with a loving farm girl while mooning over a First Nations girl, bought from a residential school and held captive by the local store owner who works her by day and locks her up at night.

Art stumbles through this story, haunted by crimes he saw during the war and which he felt powerless to stop. Now he, as well as Joel, witness crime and injustice taking place on the North Thompson and must figure out ways to stop it, Art struggling through his disabling addictions and Joel with his own powerlessness as a boy becoming a man.

Longtime readers of Lane’s poems — e.g. Newspaper Walls, We Talk of Women, Just Living, even Dominion Day Dance — will recognize this country and some of these incidents. Deep River Night gives the much bigger picture as a few males truly become men and poetry is in the air.

Several years ago I was on an early morning bird walk in a patch of Lotus Land some call Victoria. The leader was a young naturalist who knew every bird song and had a laserlike ability to focus on the source of each voice. As he continued to astonish us with his uncanny abilities and his deep knowledge, one follower asked him where was the best place to go birding. He was direct and unequivocal: Saskatchewan has one of the best bird flyways in the world, he said. Go there.

Yes, you may have to do a fair bit of shovelling here one season and swatting and slapping in the other, but birders have long known the Prairies as host to a wealth of bird life, even as various industries, government inaction, and urban encroachment inexorably diminish it. Three experts from three provinces, John Acorn, Alan Smith and Nicola Koper, give some great advice on where to find birds in their new book, Best Places to Bird in the Prairies (Greystone; $24.95).

Saskatchewan is covered by Smith, a man who spent 37 years with the Canadian Wildlife Service and who helped establish the Last Mountain Bird Observatory. He takes us through that location, both ends, and to the Cypress Hills, Grasslands National Park, Prince Albert National Park, and the marvellous Chaplin Lake area along the No. 1 Highway.

What I particularly get a kick out of is the time he spends in our two major cities. He sets up a little competitiveness between Saskatoon and Regina and points out the best each city has to offer. Saskatoon has the merlins and white pelicans while Regina is a major gull watch, and boasts the green heron. I can attest to many orioles spotted while I ambled around Wascana Lake.

Acorn in Alberta and Koper in Manitoba also do some urban birding, my favourite being the trip to the Alberta Grain Terminal in Edmonton to watch gyrfalcons and prairie falcons, as well as others, go after the huge pigeon population. What a display. And realizing just how close to Calgary are both the Glenmore Reservoir and Weed Lake makes me reflect on how much more time I could be spending just outside the city rather than on its streets.

Of course, a book like this, besides being a terrific guide, brings up a little competitiveness in readers to name their own favourite spots, as well as some envy over birds mentioned but not yet seen. I think of various places in Manitoba close to the Ontario woods, those Mississippi kites and chimney swifts in Winnipeg and, closer to home, Estevan and Roche Percee where, to paraphrase Candace Savage’s foreword, I feel an urgency to get down there and see indigo and lazuli buntings. Also dickcissels. Also bobolinks.