Washing at the Creek
by Frances Riviere
Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 2008, ISBN 971.23004970092, 211 pp., $20.95 paper.

Affluence can make us insular. We become impervious to the outside world. With our material gain, we hoard our wealth and ignore people living on the edge of society. They are the others and not our concern. But, imagine yourself in such a position: how you would obtain food for your family, how you would shelter them, how you would clothe them.

In her memoir, Frances Riviere writes of how she persevered while growing up in southern Alberta during the Great Depression. Circumstances bring the family into a position where they struggle to survive. The author writes about one of these circumstances, of her mother's estrangement from her family for marrying Bob Riviere, a Metis. She goes on to explain that her grandmother Burns ruled the Burns' household and that it was only after her death that the family visited her grandfather Burns. This family breach will move the younger Rivieres in a direction otherwise not taken.

"We were different," Riviere writes, "and we were the same, sharing traits and practices of both the native and the white races--a race caught between, and claimed by neither." (15) It is much later that she learns that the neighbours referred to the Rivieres as "those half-breeds up the creek." (16)

Riviere and her siblings and parents subsist by berry picking, hunting--more than once this turns to poaching--taming horses and taking up residence in abandoned houses, often at her father's whim. Amiable, short-tempered and impractical when it comes to money, Bob leaves the worry of paying bills to Mary, Frances's mother.

Despite the hard life she experiences, Frances enjoys aspects of her childhood. She speaks of trailing her father everywhere (her other choice is to pick berries, which she hated) and learns to love horses, a connection that will follow her into adulthood. She cares for them, learning to rope and corral them, and knows no fear 16 hands high above the ground.

She also learns that you have to be tough to survive. It is this toughness that helps her through the poverty that seems to pursue the Rivieres at every turn. Later this toughness her father is so proud of leads to an inflexibility that will alienate her brother Bobby and her from the family.

Raised in the bush country, Frances is shy and hesitant about attending school: "I kept my head down, hoping to divert attention" (10). And lunch consisting of bannock, lard and baked beans does not endear her to the girls in the school.

Her paternal grandfather, "Frenchy," introduces her to Dickens and gives her Stories about Children, which include the tale of Little Nell. Her love of reading will become a life-long association with literature. Frenchy, living like a hermit, is generous with his pension, giving a portion when he can to Riviere's mother to help out the family. There are also accounts of pets, several dogs, horses and a funny anecdote of a pet pig. Visits and stays at the home of her Uncle James and Aunty Gay and several other neighbours and relatives are frequent and enjoyable. Here Frances comes to appreciate the love and understanding she is given, something she will cherish.

In her teens, she falls in love. The man is much older, to the chagrin of her parents. Unbending in their views, they seek ways to obstruct her pursuit of this love and their immutability drives Frances to seek a new life. Eventually she goes to Calgary and furthers her education with the belief it will raise her up from her much impoverished life.

It is not until after her father's death that she finds peace; "I had a dream in which he and I were together and happy. Next morning I awoke with a great weight lifted from my shoulders" (210).

Reconciliation with her mother is another matter. The poignant image of "a young woman with dark wisps of hair falling about her perspiring face" remains with us long after the closing of the book (211). This image is the one Frances wants to keep despite the years of remoteness that existed between her and her mother. And it is the image of love that remains.

Each chapter of the memoir is filled with anecdotes, the kinds of stories we like to cherish from childhood, and yet it also gives us an insight into a world of hardship, a world dearth of monetary wealth. The narrative speaks of endurance and the resiliency of the human spirit. The book is also a journey towards healing. And that makes it worth the read.

Mary Barnes is a writer living in Wasaga Beach, Ontario.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.


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