By Scot Morison, ’80 BSc(Spec) (with comments by )

Photos by John Ulan

As an author, he stands among the one‑name heroes of Canadian literature: Atwood, Munro, Wiebe. At the helm of the U of A creative writing program for many years, Wiebe’s “writing is hard” outlook and wry sense of humour helped forge successful authors and stoke a passion for language. So when a former student set out to profile this iconic writer and editor, it seemed only natural that we invite him to have the last word.*

18 newtrail.ualberta.ca *Editor’s note: While all comments and edits you see here belong to Rudy Wiebe, the handwriting does not. new trail autumn 2016 19 Over the years, Wiebe and I have and going to school, I was living stayed in touch, our relationship on a homestead in northern slowly evolving from one of teacher Saskatchewan with reserves on and student to a friendship. It is either side of me. We saw Native regime in the former Soviet Union in 1930. They centred on coffee and conversation people driving by with their ragged homesteaded in the school district of Speedwell, every few months in a Second horses going to Turtle Lake to fish, Sask., where Wiebe was born in 1934, before Cup several blocks from Wiebe’s and sometimes we bought fish moving to Coaldale, Alta., in junior high school. home in the Old Strathcona area of from them, but the history we got His memoir, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood . Winter in school was the Longfellow 19th- in the Boreal Forest, explores his childhood or summer, he century romantic Indian brave and experiences. here is a small, narrow seminar room always walks to our his squaw kind of crap. Completely He is grateful for what this country gave his meetings: a man in ludicrous,” he says. family and, because of that, has little patience on the fourth oor of the Humanities his 80s still ramrod Wiebe has also written for those who are critical of Canada taking T Building with windows that overlook the straight, fiercely ambitious historical fiction about in thousands of refugees from countries like North Saskatchewan River Valley, the High Level engaged with life the Mennonites in Canada and Syria, upended by turmoil. “Since so many of us Bridge and the downtown Edmonton skyline. and arriving with their experience of leaving eastern here have come from elsewhere within two or The view aside, there’s nothing really remarkable a head full of big Europe in search of freer, safer three generations, we, of all people, should be ideas to discuss. lives. His parents were Mennonite able to understand and accept others in similar about the room, but it’s my favourite spot on We are friends immigrants who fled religious situations,” he says. “A wealthy middle power like campus. It was here that a gru , sometimes now but he still persecution under the Stalinist Canada could be doing more.” cranky professor helped an unfocused and intimidates me. Part indi erent student uncover his true vocation. of it is his talent and output. Wiebe is one of the finest writers I met Rudy Wiebe, ’56 BA, ’60 this country has ever produced. His MA, ’09 DLitt (Honorary), in the craggy face, grey-white beard and summer of 1979. A zoology major piercing gaze are well-known to who didn’t really want to study CanLit readers. Beginning with his science anymore, I had found his novel Peace Shall Destroy Many in introductory creative writing 1962, he has published more than class while flipping through the 25 books — including 10 novels and thick U of A calendar for half- five short story collections — and interesting electives to round out edited or contributed to many my final year. The prerequisites others. His accolades include two for admission included a portfolio, Governor General’s Awards for so I wrote a couple of short stories English-language fiction. and slipped them under Wiebe’s While Wiebe’s themes are many door in the mostly deserted and varied, the principal subjects Humanities Building in late August. of his writing are the Mennonite When Wiebe summoned me a few diaspora and the experience of days later, he made it quite clear Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples under the samples I’d provided were white domination. execrable. Then he told me I could Through deeply researched go ahead and register because in novels he has explored the First one of the stories, based on real Nations perspective on white events, I’d at least tried to write exploration, commercial expansion something I had a clue about: being and settlement in Canada with young and stupid. boldness, honesty, complexity and I was no standout in that first respect. The origins of his interest For the past class, but evidently I did well come from childhood. “I remember 20 years, Wiebe has enough to earn entry to Wiebe’s when I was a kid growing up done his writing in intermediate course in the winter his book‑lined home term. By its end, I was hooked office. His collection, on the process and challenge of which has begun to storytelling and had abandoned outgrow his shelf any remaining thoughts of a career space, includes books on Arctic, Mennonite in biology. One way or another, and western I have made most of my living Canadian history. through writing ever since.

20 newtrail.ualberta.ca new trail autumn 2016 21 I confess here I had read and the author of several none of Wiebe’s work when I signed WRITERS novels including Moon Honey, up for that first class with him in MENTORING The Widows and Monoceros. With 1979, but I slowly caught up and WRITERS FOR Wharton, she was part of Wiebe’s have now read most of his books. 40 YEARS final graduate-level writing Getting through one of his novels workshop at the U of A in 1991-92. Celebrating four requires concentration; he has decades of the Mayr says: “He had a really hearty an idiosyncratic attitude toward U of A writers-in- respect for research and for doing punctuation, and his syntax can residence program your due diligence as a writer.” With be a challenge to follow. His entry Forty years ago, a laugh, she recalls one session in in the Canadian Encyclopedia English professor and particular. “Rudy bawled us all out says this of his style: “though author Rudy Wiebe about something Tom had written pushed his bosses to sometimes ungainly, [it] frequently establish a writer-in- about the Cretaceous era. He said: results in an eloquence that is both residence program at ‘Do any of you even know what the appropriate and evocative.” To put the University of . Cretaceous was?’ ” Since then, many it another way, he is a writer who eminent novelists, short Mayr says she would never expects his readers to do some work, story writers and poets undertake the kind of sprawling but that work is richly rewarded. have come to Edmonton historical fiction that Wiebe has Wiebe could obviously write to mentor aspiring and written but appreciates his view emerging writers in the simpler, more straightforward community. on research: “There is a library of stories, but he rejects the easy books to read before you start your approach to his art. “Writing is hard, The program, the own book.” As a writer who teaches, longest continuously so there is no point being half-assed running offering of its she also admires his dedication about it,” he says. kind in Canada, provides to maintaining a writing practice. For me, that uncompromising a distinguished writer “Rudy once told me that he actually a year’s salary, time to attitude is evident in his decision in write and an office, in took a decrease in pay and course the novel A Discovery of Strangers exchange for mentoring load to keep writing.” to take on a multi-layered story other writers. The ripples , professor of about Sir John Franklin’s little- of effect created both by English at the U of C and author the writers who mentor known first expedition overland and those who are of five novels and several books through the Coppermine River mentored reach across of non-fiction, was also a student. region and his fateful contact with the country and beyond, “Rudy could be impatient and to readers and writers the Dene people. He could have around the world. difficult, and he didn’t suffer fools easily, instead, written about the gladly,” she remembers. “At the infamous third expedition, in during a 25-year career in the U of A English In March, 22 former same time, he was generous with which the explorer and 134 men on writers-in-residence his attention and, as a teacher, department, from 1967 to 1992, but spent most returned to campus two Royal Navy ships disappeared of it leading intense and demanding creative to celebrate the 40th mostly interested in the quality in the Canadian Arctic while writing classes based on the approach he learned anniversary of the of the writing. Although he had searching for the Northwest as a grad student at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ program. Special strong opinions, he didn’t indulge events included an Passage. A novel about the lost Workshop at the University of Iowa. Wiebe, now regarded novels such as Icefields and Salamander, announcement that in the ego trips of some writing expedition might have attracted professor emeritus in the Department of English studied with Wiebe and now teaches creative the creative writing instructors who expect students to more readers but it held no appeal and Film Studies, was one of the first teachers in writing at the U of A, one of Wiebe’s successors room, Room 4-59, in be their clones or sycophants.” the northeast corner of for the author. “I didn’t find Canada to employ the workshop technique that in the job. Wharton remembers with a rueful the fourth floor of the Van Herk battled with Wiebe anything particularly interesting is, these days, pretty much universally practised laugh that one of the most damning things Humanities Building is many times, particularly as a Wiebe and fellow about the idea of a bunch of in creative writing programs. Wiebe could write in the margins of a draft story now named the “Rudy master’s student working under writer Margaret Wiebe Room.” Atwood reconnect Englishmen on two ships slowly Detailed, no-holds-barred vivisection of submitted to his workshop was a single word, his supervision on her first novel, last April at the discovering they are going to die,” student work was the main instructional mode scribbled in response to a sentence or passage he Judith, yet she holds a high regard 10th Annual Kreisel he says. “We already know the what, in his classes. Perceived laziness on the part of found wanting: “feeble.” I remember seeing that for the man, his work and his Lecture presented by but the why is always the more an aspiring writer was something approaching cringe-inducing feedback on my work, too. teaching. “Rudy’s strengths as a the U of A’s Canadian interesting part of a story for me.” mortal sin. Tom Wharton, author of highly “Rudy was the kind of teacher you came to appreciate much later,” teacher were his attention to detail Literature Centre. Wiebe brought that tough- Wharton says, dryly. He remembers retreating to the campus pub more and his awareness that we should The two became friends in the late mindedness about good stories and than once with classmates after a workshop “to drink and badmouth” their be writing our own stories about 1960s, when she lived the storytelling craft to his role as professor. “But 90 per cent of the time, he was right,” Wharton says now. Alberta, based on our experience in Edmonton. professor. He taught other courses is an associate professor of English at the University of and the world we know.”

22 newtrail.ualberta.ca new trail autumn 2016 23 physical and sexual abuse as a child, was part of The novel was inspired by the loss of Wiebe’s eldest son, a drunken group convicted of the beating death Michael, to suicide in 1985. He was 24. When I asked Wiebe in Wetaskiwin, Alta., of a man they believed to be about writing the most difficult book of his career, he began While Wharton, van Herk and a child molester.) Johnson wrote a letter to Wiebe to answer by telling me he’d once heard American novelist others worked quite successfully asking him how he knew so much about her John Irving declare that he always writes the last sentence with Wiebe, being his student famous ancestor, and they began to correspond. of his books first so he knows where he’s going. “I did not was not a positive experience Eventually, they met at the prison and Wiebe know where this novel could go, but I knew where it began,” for everyone, even in hindsight. helped Johnson tell her poignant and harrowing Wiebe said. “For a long time, I had never thought of writing a One former student who has since life story in the book. He also testified on her story like that. But at a certain point, when you get a certain gone on to publish a couple of well- behalf at parole hearings over the years. Now out distance from it, it tends to grow.” He knew the subject matter reviewed novels responded to my of prison and living in southern Alberta, Johnson was not his exclusively, however. “I talked it over with my request for an interview in a terse says: “I love Rudy to pieces. He has always been family. They said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ but they email message: “I don’t think I’m very respectful, kind and gentle with me.” didn’t hesitate at all.” the right person to talk to.” I was given a glimpse of how seriously Wiebe Julienne Isaacs wrote of the novel in the Globe and Mail: Wiebe knows he was famously takes the responsibility of friendship while “There is no cure for the pain of premature loss. Longing for hard to please and admits to some working on this profile. Late last fall, he got word regrets. “At a certain point, you that Gil Cardinal, the writer and director with have to become a kind of judge, you whom he collaborated on the screenplay for Big know. And maybe I shouldn’t have , the 1998 CBC television miniseries adapted been as judgmental as I was, but from The Temptations of Big Bear, was in an that was my way of approaching Edmonton hospital. Though the two men hadn’t things. This is good, this is spoken in quite some time, Wiebe immediately poor, this is just plain shit. But went to visit Cardinal in hopes of buoying his sometimes,” he concedes, “you may spirits. He got as much out of the visit as Cardinal miss some really good stuff.” did. “Gil had the same sharp wit I remembered, even though his body was completely ruined,” Wiebe acknowledges Wiebe said. A few weeks later, shortly before he is not an easy man to get close to, Cardinal succumbed to his illness, I joined Wiebe but those who have earned his trust at a luncheon where members of the Alberta discover a very loyal friend. His film and television community honoured the best friend in the literary world was Métis filmmaker with the 2015 David Billington the late novelist and poet Robert Award for his impressive life’s work. Cardinal Kroetsch, whose death in 2011 at age was by then too sick to attend, but for Wiebe it 83 after a car accident was a body blow to Wiebe. He is a tough man but I saw him in tears the afternoon WIEBE HAS WRITTEN COMPLEX BOOKS he delivered a eulogy at Kroetsch’s BECAUSE THAT’S THE WAY HE BELIEVES funeral. “They were night and day THOSE STORIES HAD TO BE TOLD as personalities, but they had a real shared interest in the West and in literature,” van Herk says of the writers’ close bond. was important to go and pay tribute. Throughout Another important, if very the afternoon, I watched as he sought out many different, literary friendship of Cardinal’s other friends in the room to share a is with Yvonne Johnson, the story or a memory about the man. woman with whom Wiebe co- In contrast to his legendary ferocity as writer, wrote Stolen Life: The Journey teacher and activist, the personal Rudy Wiebe This late 19th-century of a Cree Woman. Johnson, the is quiet and private. He and his wife, Tena, who bear claw necklace, great-great-granddaughter of Big have been married for 58 years, spend much time rumoured to belong Bear, read Wiebe’s richly layered with their two children, four grandchildren and at one time to Plains novel, The Temptations of Big their church community. But family life has Cree Chief Big Bear, Bear, about the Plains Cree chief also been a source of great pain for Wiebe. His holds great meaning unjustly implicated in the 1885 last novel, Come Back, was published in the fall for Wiebe. The piece Frog Lake Massacre, when she of 2014, around the time of the author’s 80th incorporates Hudson Bay trade beads and was in Kingston Penitentiary birthday. A long time surfacing, it is the story of five-centimetre-long serving a life sentence for murder. a retired professor’s attempt to understand his bone hair pipe beads. (She, who had suffered years of son’s decision to take his own life years earlier.

24 newtrail.ualberta.ca new trail autumn 2016 25 the missing loved one will tug at river valley. We both noticed, with a mix of the heart, call that command in amusement and nostalgia, that although the perpetuity. Wiebe makes us attend furniture in the room had been replaced, the to the beauty of the call.” Possibly a good reader — he was an actor, really — that same framed Alex Colville print, Dog, Boy, and St. a handful of undergraduate and even more important to Wiebe than he could make anything sound good, including John River, still hung on one wall. graduate classes with him between the formal reviews, however, are stuff that probably wasn’t,” Wiebe recalled with After assuming his usual spot at the head of 1979 and 1984 (a sweaty-palmed, the informal ones received from a laugh. the long table, Wiebe grew reflective. “We were heart-pounding experience others who have endured a similar Entering HUB Mall, we passed the coffee the first class in here and I was the first teacher. whenever it was my turn to present loss. “It’s not a particularly easy stop formerly known as Java Jive. My turn to The building had just been built and a room had a new piece to the workshop). He book to read, in one sense, because remember: midway through Wiebe’s three-hour to be assigned to the writing class, so I asked and was not the warmest or most it tries to grapple with that sense workshops, many of us came here to refuel with they gave me this beautiful space,” he said. “It’s a encouraging prof I had at the U of A, of not feeling adequate, or ‘What’s caffeine, not infrequently nursing the wounds very moving experience to sit here now and think but somehow it was his teaching wrong with me?’ ” Wiebe said. “But of a stinging critique. Not that it always hurt; of all the people who’ve worked in here. A lot of that had the most profound impact many, many people have thanked Wiebe’s stern countenance belies an offbeat students, a lot of stories.” upon me. I have yet to achieve half me for writing it.” sense of humour and I remember plenty of Looking across the table at Wiebe, I of what I aspired to as a writer, but Writing Come Back was an act of laughter in his workshop, too. contemplated my own experience up here in Wiebe made me want to reach for bravery. Necessary, and hopefully Eventually, Wiebe and I arrived at the last something more than mediocrity. healing, for Wiebe, but brave. In stop of our tour, making our way up to 4-59, He still does. Now at an age writing the novel, Wiebe exposed the creative writing seminar room in the when others might say that’s himself in ways that he has never Humanities Building. Neither of us had been STORYTELLING IS A UNIQUELY enough and be content to sit back been comfortable doing. Then back for a long time. We spent a few moments HUMAN GIFT THAT ALLOWS US TO PUT and rest (on the couch if not on again, Wiebe has never lacked for just absorbing that breathtaking view of the VISIONS IN EACH OTHER’S HEADS their laurels), Wiebe continues to courage, especially the courage spend part of most days at his desk of his convictions. He has written working. He recently finished the complex books — difficult to write, footnotes for a book of his collected challenging to read — because essays to be published in fall 2016 by that’s the way he believes those NeWest Press. And he is definitely stories had to be told. He chose writing something else, though he being a demanding teacher over refused to say whether it’s a new a popular one because he felt novel. “You know I never talk about that doing otherwise would not what I’m writing,” he scolded. be doing his job. And through As a final question, I asked his activism, he has stood up for Wiebe what advice he might offer individuals in trouble when others the next generation of writers, in have abandoned them, like Yvonne an age dominated by 140-character Johnson, because of his belief that tweets and other wafer-thin everyone deserves a chance to social media, of dying newspapers reclaim their lives. and magazines and what feels like the near-extinction of One sunny afternoon independent bookstores. But Wiebe last September, Wiebe and I took a is not worried about the future walk around North Campus. “Look of literature or those who create at all the bright young faces,” Wiebe it. He believes that for writers, the said, watching nervous-looking real ones, this is a calling, not a job, undergrads rush past on the way and they will find ways to keep to class. He pointed to St. Stephen’s writing — whatever form that takes. College, his first residence when “It seems to me that storytelling he arrived here as a 19-year-old in is a uniquely human gift that the early ’50s. Later, as we passed allows us to put visions in each the Old Arts Building, he told me a other’s heads, and that’s not going story about legendary writer W.O. to stop.” The Wiebes’ Strawberry Mitchell, who sometimes came Creek Lodge, a log retreat centre about 80 up from Calgary to cover Wiebe’s kilometres southwest of workshop. Mitchell used to collect Edmonton, is surrounded and read student work aloud in by boreal forest similar to class instead of having the students where Wiebe grew up. The Writers’ Guild of Alberta read and analyze it for themselves uses the facility regularly beforehand. Wiebe wasn’t a fan of for writing retreats. this approach. “Mitchell was such

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