Free As a Bird

Free as a Bird  by Gina McMurchy-Barber is a book I impulse bought while in a cute rustic book cafe up in the small town of Rossland, B.C. after a two-hour hike up the side of a mountain.  I had already placed myself on a book-buying ban from buying 27 new books at a used book sale one week earlier, and 4 other new books at a college in Vancouver, which I had just visited a couple of days ago.  Nonetheless, this book caught my attention as I was browsing through the idyllic bookstore: first because this book was a finalist for the Govorner General's literary awards, second because that meant the book was written by a Canadian author, third because the book was small, and fourth because of the premise of the book as it was written on the back cover seemed really interesting.

 

 

This book tells the story of a life of a young girl with Down Syndrome in British Columbia at the time in history when people with such disabilities were sent to insane asylums where they were treated little better (and maybe even worse) than prisoners.  This story is told in the first person as Ruby-Jean Sharp recounts her life in Woodlands School - a once real-life institution that had been originally called the Provincial Asylum for the Insane.  With the voice of a young girl who can't quite understand everything going on around her, Ruby-Jean describes her surroundings and emotional reactions to those surroundings in ways that cannot help but provoke emotions in the reader. 

 

 

It is noteworthy to mention that although the characters in the novel are fictionous, the author did spend 6 months herself at Woodlands School as a caregiver and witnessed firsthand many of the abuses that could be given to the children there. Her own sister had been born with a disability but her parents decided to raise Jane instead of sending her to an institution like the doctor recommended.  The author, Gina, later left her job at the institution to work for the Community Living Society, an organization started by parents and caring staff to get residents out of Woodlands School and into group homes in the community. 

 

 

I have never cried so much while reading a book.  Out of the story's 160 pages, I probably only spent about 30 of them dry-eyed, if that.  It was an awkward encounter while camping when my friend stepped out of his cabin in the morning only to find me on the deck with tears streaming down my face and a pile of kleenex beside me.  The story is heart-rending - all the more so because it is based on true circumstances.  This sort of thing actually happened to people, and it broke my heart reading about it.  The story itself was told brilliantly, the emotions and descriptions are so vivid that they leave a very clear picture in the mind of the reader.  I would recommend this book, but only if you feel like you need something to cry about.

First Peoples In Canada

First Peoples in Canada by Alan D. McMillan and Eldon Yellowhorn is a textbook that was assigned to me for my "Canadian Aboriginal Cultures" class.  Although I have really been enjoying the class and have been really personally challenged by it, I have to admit I feel a sense of relief upon finishing this book.  The book is essentially an introduction to the First Nation cultures throughout Canada and stretches its discussion back to "time immemorial" (which is usually during the Holocene period 10,000 or so years ago) up until the modern day.  This is a lot of history to fit in one book, especially when you consider that we are dealing with dozens of distinct societies.  The complexities of this book are further compounded when one considers that we actually have very little with which to build a history for First Nations until the dawn of globalization (European contact with the Americas). 

The first chapter of this book is devoted to explaining the different kinds of anthropology and ethnography (and a whole series of other -ologies and -ographies) that go into piecing together the missing pieces of the puzzle.  Unfortunately, due to a lack of actual story, the piecing together makes for some of the most dry and unengaging history that one could read. Subsequent chapters in the book are organized regionally according to a broad definition of cultural groups: Maritime, Eastern-Woodlands, Plains, Sub-Arctic, Plateau, North-West Coast, Arctic and Metis.  Every chapter begins with a long descriptions of what the different fossils might mean about the early cultural habits of native groups in the Holocene and Doecene periods and drawn out speculations about how those groups settled where they did in the first place.  Speculation and description culminate into a snapshot of the eating, hunting and sociological habits of these early nations.  The chapters then describe the meeting between Europeans and these Native groups - how the meeting happened and what implications it had for the native residents of that region.  Finally every chapter moves into the 20th century to describe the recent struggles and issues that aboriginal groups are dealing with today and what inroads have been made in their discussions with the Canadian government.

If the description of the book that I have written above sounds dry, it is because the book is dry.  The parts on fossils were particularly hard to get through, especially since the pages were large, the writing was small and the chapters were long.  I did appreciate the end of the chapters though, which educated me as to how all of this boring history manages to fit into the now, and this book has brought to mind some issues such as land claims that have provided food for thought.  While I can say that although this was not a fun read, it was an informative one, and I walk away from this book knowing a lot more about First Nations in Canada than I did.

The Bishop's Man

Although The Bishop's Man isn't a genre I usually dally in, this book caught my attention and I decided to give it a try. It is written by a Candian author, Linden MacIntyre, and it is a recipient of the Governor General's Literary Choice Award.

The book itself is about a priest in the Roman Catholic Church who has, over his career, been given the responsibility of dealing with corruption in the priesthood. Known among his peers as "the exorcist", it is his duty to go to places where priest have been engaged in less than priestly behaviours (notably child molestation), and do the clean-up work before the media gets involved. At the point in time that this book begins, the media is getting a little too close for comfort on some of the church's dirty secrets, and so the priest is sent to a small town parish in Nova Scotia by his bishop to lie low and be the local priest. Now that the priest finds himself surrounded with silence and solitude, however, he begins to process and struggle with events that happened in the past. In the meantime, there are those within the little town who are not without their own problems.

If you like fast paced, action and adventure filled novels, this story is not for you. If you like happy stories, or stories that at least end on a happy note, then this isn't for you either. If you like linear stories that have a clear beginning and end and proceed linearly throughout the book, then this isn't for you either. In retrospect, I definitely wasn't the person who should have been reading this book. Very little actually happens in the entire story; rather it reads like an internal monologue and the priest processes the events of the past and what is happening around him. The story, since it follows his train of thought, does not hesitate to jump around in time frequently, and without warning. The protagonist will be out doing something and then suddenly a completely unrelated paragraph from events five years earlier will interject. These multiple layers of story are revealed parallel to each other, so the book in some ways reads like a mystery, with things being alluded to that are never actually explicitly spelled out. This means that the reader has to be constantly connecting the dots; if you don't you will get lost, real fast.

Writing style aside, I found the approach of the book to also be weird and adverse to my own way of thinking. Although this was a novel dealing primarily with religious characters, a religious background and religious concepts, the idea of God was almost absent from the entirety of the novel. In contrast, liquor appeared on almost every page. The author's approach to the church was a secular one from a completely institutional standpoint. If God was ever mentioned, it was in passing; and the church's purpose was not to serve God first, but rather to be an institution that was self-sanctioned to take care of the souls of people. The church was presented as very self-focused, and there was more concern on the part of the ecclesiastical officials in the book with preserving the reputation of the church than bringing truth, life and God to the people. I admit that this presentation, especially the latter part about the church being concerned with its reputation, is valid, for some church institutions. There are some Christians who approach religion like this. It disturbs me, however, that someone can write a 400 page book about the church and not have God enter the conversation at all. This is completely opposite from my own experience of religion and I felt like it was a distorted view of the Roman Catholic religion as well. In fact, the author all but agreed with this sentiment when the protagonist wondered to himself why every priest he had ever met was some wonderful example of perversion and corruption when there were so many priests out there who were actually good and holy people. It should also be noted that this book presented a very poignant and completely one sided argument against celibacy. Although I myself am not a fan of institutionalized celibacy, I felt the book failed to recognize the true depth of reasoning and tradition behind this lifestyle choice. It would be a hard thing to explain, however, without bringing God into the picture.

Despite all of my misgivings about this book, I cannot say that I regret reading it. It is good to know what people are reading. This is popular, secular literature: this is how people see the church. It is interesting to consider how this book will be the basis of understanding that many have for the church. To this book's credit however, the author did try to stress the point that priests are just human too, with problems like the rest of us. This at least is true of any person, regardless of whether God enters the picture or not.