Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

Ferguson, Ted. Back Roads. Edmonton: NeWest Press, T6G 1E6

Travel Writing and Memoirs seem to be at the top of the list for writers and readers these days. Categorized as non-fiiction by NeWest Press, Ted Ferguson’s latest 210 page paperback is a finely-edited work that takes the reader from the heart of Vancouver to the backroads of Northern Alberta. At some point, presumably in his 30’s, Mr. Ferguson (Ted), as the backcover of the book indicates, collapses in a Vancouver restaurant and decides to give up his “workaholic lifestyle and move his family to the secluded back roads of northern Alberta.” He takes the opportunity to purchase some land sight-unseen and decides that the north is the right place for him and his family–his wife Jessie and son Alex.

They spend part of the first winter in a borrowed house and familiarize themselves with the area. Finally, they find a house and have it moved onto their property. The move comes with all the “things” that usually accompany a move to an out-of-the-way-place: where to find a house, where to dig for water, how to survive the 50 below winters in general, meetings with local characters, securing an income, raising a child in isolation, purchasing some animals (in their case several goats), keeping an automobile running in blizzard conditions, making long trips to a major city (Edmonton) to do business or to seek medical help (in this case, to find a vet for a dying dog), learning how to make do with what is available, attending country auctions, living among boozers, losers, loners, the usual array of local characters and others who merely seek solitude. There is an abrupt turn in the narrative when Alex grows up, leaves home, and goes to Queens University. From Queens he obtains a job in an office in Toronto. At that point Ted and Jessie, having lived in the North for ten years and having survived on Ted’s income from freelancing, decide to move to Toronto to be nearer Alex and his wife and child. The family unit–small as it is–is a dominant force throughout the work.

Back Roads was a fast read. The folklore of the north is familiar; the old themes of isolation and vastness of the Canadian North are there; Mr. Ferguson describes a pack of dogs on the prowl (one follows Ted home when his truck breaks down); he remembers to include the most important piece of prairie architecture: the outhouse. He recalls the search for water and divining to find it, and he talks about growing a garden. In some ways, with all these familiar subjects in the text, I felt as if I were seeing broken fragments of images from Jack London’s novels, Rudy Wiebe’s The Mad Trapper, Kroetsch’s The Seed Catalogue, Margaret Laurence’s novels and other such works.

But, Mr. Ferguson (Ted) unliike these literary writers is a journalist. He writes clearly and factually, and his scenes (for better or worse) go by lightly, quickly, and often emotionlessly, unlike the highly textured works of varous Canadian literary writers. (Even at points in the non-fiction where I kept telling myself I should feel some emotion, I was left distanced from the work). Alex, the son, for example, is never really fully described. nor is Jessie. They are outlines that one can fill in with whatever details one wants. When the pack of dogs follow Ted after his truck breaks down, my heart doesn’t skp a beat. Somehow the dogs seemed unreal, almost like shadows of dogs, rather than real dogs and one senses that Mr. Ferguson is never at any real riisk.

In the end, because I was raised in isolation and disliked the lifestyle with a passion– other than school, glimpses of the outside world viewed vicariously through the stories teachers told, and my pets– it is difficult for me to really believe that the Ferguson family’s ten years in the north was as carefree as Mr. Ferguson describes it. The real relief for me in reading the book was in finding that Alex, the son, actually made the move to Toronto changing the course of direction of, and for, the entire family. It would be interesting to have the events in the book told from Alex’s point-of-view. I suspect, then, it would be an extremely different story.

It’s difficult to say who this work will really satisfy, or who Mr. Ferguson suppposes is his reading audience. One assumes that people living in out of the way places will see glimpses of themselves in the book. People who have never lived in isolation can think that Mr. Ferguson has gone on a romantic adventure. People who don’t read literature, or don’t read literature as “literature” may not be bothered by the journalistic mode, which seems to have come into vogue again, if it ever was before.

All said, Ted Ferguson’s Back Roads is a good one-time read. I think I will send it to my mother for Mother’s day. She likes local history and local stories about isolated areas. (In fact, she and my father still live in one of the more remote areas of southern Alberta). After she reads it, she can pass it on to a neighbour who can pass it on to a neighbour, who can pass it on. There’s not much entertainment in the “farther” regions of this province, whether it be the north that Mr. Ferguson depicts or the “forgotten corner “of southern Alberta where I was raised, so one readable book goes a long way. For that I can applaud Mr. Ferguson.