3 Stars
This book, classified as a memoir and complete with family photos, consists of twelve stories about the life of the Kashubs around Barry’s Bay, Ontario, in the mid-twentieth century. The author, a descendant of the Kashubs who first arrived and settled the region in 1858, outlines some of the customs of the Kashub community which were part of her upbringing.
What is unusual about the book is that it’s published in two languages. The recto pages are in English whereas the verso pages are a translation into Kashubian by Stanley Frymark. (I met Mr. Frymark when my husband and I visited Poland in the spring of 2014; we even stayed at his B&B, Zamek Zaborski.) Though as a child I spoke Kashubian, I can’t read the language so my review is based only on the English.
I was interested in reading these stories because I too am a Kashub descendant who grew up in the Barry’s Bay area; in fact, I’m only four years younger than the author so my childhood memories are of the same time period about which she writes. Certainly some of which she describes resonated with me: jam-jams and twisters; day-long weddings; gun firings on New Year’s Eve; First Communion dresses and photos; picking blueberries; chokecherry jam; harvest meals; stone fences; Kaszuby roadside crosses; and being taught by nuns at St. Joseph’s school.
Some of the stories, however, had little Kashubian culture in them. The first one, for instance, entitled “Of Stories and Ecstasy,” focuses on Sister Therisita, a teacher at the elementary school, and the stories she told her students. It describes the daily life of the nuns and emphasizes how isolated Barry’s Bay was from the outside world seventy years ago. Likewise, the second story, “Dying in Snow,” could be set almost anywhere in Canada during the winter.
“The Berry Patch,” the third story, begins with the suggestion that Sister Therisita prayed for Jesus to manifest Himself while she prayed. How does the author know this was Sister’s “only yearning” and that she “never relinquished her dream”? Did the author use poetic license to embroider a story? I was left wondering if the other stories are factual or if they too were embellished. Did I read fiction or non-fiction or some amalgam?
Another element that bothered me is the deification of people. Grandpa Szczypior in “Table” is a godlike figure whose fields are called “his garden of Gethsemane” and whose voice in church gave “majesty to all their blessed events.” His beneficence to his neighbours and community is described as being boundless. In “Easter Finery,” it’s the author’s mother who is idolized in her service to her neighbours. And Bernadette in “The Berry Patch” is “absorbed in her thoughts about her holiness and how spotless she was. She had never even committed a venial sin, nothing had stained her soul”?
One of the best stories is “Lone Wolf” which very effectively touches on the loss of culture and traditions. Unfortunately, the author, as she does several times, feels the need to explain what the story already makes obvious: “The last time we visited StańcƗów we wanted to tell him that the land belonged to our lineage. . . . We wanted to remind StańcƗów that our species existed here because stark Martin had roamed all the way over to this treacherous new country and it was only by sheer fortitude that we survived the first century, so pride in that feat alone should keep us bound together in the very place for the next century. Somebody needed to explain to him that our story had been lived here too. Now was the time to realize the greatness of legacy.”
There are contradictions that irked. Having lived in the area described, I’m aware that the land granted to the Kashubs was “a land full of rocks” which “despite the efforts of three generations . . . could not be transformed into farmland.” But Grandpa Szczypior has “long fertile fields”? And a pet peeve is the repeated references to northern and northeastern Ontario. Having lived in both Barry’s Bay and in northeastern Ontario, I can vouch that they are not the same parts of the province!
The book could use some revision. Some ambiguity needs clarification. References are made to Siberia without explaining that this does not mean the region in Russia as people unfamiliar with Barry’s Bay might think. In one paragraph, a nun is praying in her room in the convent and in the next she is praying in a classroom? Who would be the middle daughter of eight daughters? Is the drunk man at the altar for Easter Mass the author’s father? After speculation about the many things for which the man seeks forgiveness, there’s the statement that “Momma would find forgiveness in her heart, she understood that men could be weak and not be able to resist the temptation of the bottle.” This is after her comparing her new coat to “the colour of the spilled wine from the bottles that fell out of our dad’s truck.” Yet later stories like “Pulp” show a different father. In “Road to Halfway,” the road is both “a solitary road” and the road along which houses were built on small concessions? And there’s a statement on p. 189 that I found disturbing: “The union of our father and mother [second cousins] was a co-mingling of the same clean blood and the eight of us kids in the fifth generation have always been proud that we descended from that single hereditary Kashubian gene”?!
Some editing is also in order. Comma splices abound. At times commas are omitted when needed, and at other times, they are used where unnecessary. A paragraph will sometimes switch from third person pronouns to second person pronouns for no reason. The author seems to love words and then uses them over and over; for instance, on p. 55, some form of patriarch or patriarchy is used five times. Atavistic is another word that is used repeatedly: “atavistic trait” and “atavistic memory” and “atavistic confidence.” At times language is flowery and ornate and at other times it is colloquial and ungrammatical: “Us children really loved sweets” and “us Kashubians settled in among the stumps” and “It was us kids who were in charge of the fire” and “Us Kashubs had never associated with anyone but our own” and “us kids bouncing on the back of the pickup truck were their century marker.”
Other than for Kashubians living in Poland and Kashubian descendants in the Barry’s Bay region, I’m not certain that this book will have much appeal. The intention, to describe the life of Canadian Kashubs in the mid-twentieth century, is laudable, but the execution is less so.
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