Saturday at the Gardens

Volunteers at Abbey Gardens
Originally uploaded by olliefern

I returned to that community garden yesterday after a two-week break. It's amazing how much can change in that time: flower stalks twice as high; petals twice as shiny; lemons and strawberries ready for plucking; beautiful lettuce heads we can harvest (the first time I took something from the Gardens home.)

I sowed some Leaf Beets and trimmed flowers off sweet peas. One of the volunteers, a woman that always shows up in dresses, black church shoes and pearl necklaces, introduced herself as Thérèse before asking me where I was from. When I found out she was from Cameroon, I asked if she spoke french; from then on, it was all ça va, oui and au revoir. I'm very happy to now have someone to practice my broken french every Saturday!

Today, I dropped by Blanche to feed her and worked on my CV (successfully managed to get it down to 2 pages.) I was about to start working on a job application for the Southbank Centre when I saw minuting as one of the job descriptions... and all the joy drained out of me. I must remind myself that this is not the age to be picky about what's going to pay for my bills.

Hunting High and Low

Michael Crummey, River Thieves, 2001
I never in a million years would have picked up this novel if it hadn't been for my book club. And that's a sad thing to realise after finishing a very satisfying read. It turns out that Michael Crummey is a respected poet and prose writer in Canada, winning many awards with River Thieves as well as with his poetry collections. I can see why.

Set in the early part of the 1800s in Newfoundland (where Crummey is from), River Thieves is a sombre historical novel that charts the conflicts and misunderstandings between a group of tough settlers and the dwindling and mysterious Beothuk Indians. Bound to remote parts of the island, the Beothuk are like a people from a fantasy novel: entirely painted in red, remote and impossible to find, they entice search parties to go after them for the sake of a government wanting to create peace between the natives and the colonies. Who are the river thieves? Maybe they are the settlers who feel like they own the rivers and hunt natives who dare to interfere with their fishing. Or maybe they are the natives who are pushed into behaving like criminals in their own land by an expanding English colony that only sees them as a freakshow or gun target.

River Thieves deserves to get an audience outside of Canada because it's not only beautifully written but it shows a part of Canadian history that many are not aware of. When I studied in Canada, I heard some Canadian friends say that their history was boring. Well, this book proves them wrong. The description of Newfoundland's harsh winter landscape and what the settlers and natives had to do to survive it is worth the read alone.

I'd recommend it to:
standardfeature, kevyn_kronycles but especially dilvsy because of your interest in First Nations.
verybadhorse because of the poetic and nearly photographic descriptions of farm work, plants and animals.