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A Life in the Country
IN 1924 A YOUNG VICTORIA DAILY TIMES reporter named Bruce Hutchison: fenced a dozen acres of cheaply: purchased meadow outside Victoria. "After studying nature's alphabet for: a decade or two I learned to read a little of it."
Believing that humans divorced from nature lose their vital juices, Hutchison, the only British Columbian to have earned three Governor-General's Awards, has maintained his contacts with gardening and nature at a Shawnigan Lake cabin throughout his long newspapering career.
Now Hutchison, 87-year-old editor emeritus of the Vancouver Sun, has gathered his bumper crop of memorable characters, woodshed ruminations and garden variety common sense for a lyrical as well as critical tribute to the seasons and the earth, A Life in the Country (D&M $18.95).
"Looking out the window today on the field the valley, the blue hills, and in memory, the cabin and the forest," he writes, "I regret my own numberless faults but not a life in the country." How the memoir has been written is as important as what it relates. Poised Wordsworthian flourishes are balanced by a very formal humility. A newspaperman's sardonic humour alleviates the seriousness of a practised editorialist. Hutchison, in the tradition of the intellectual rustic, is planting some clear thoughts for posterity.
"In Canada, a nation so young, so close to the pioneers who made it, millions of kids have known nothing better than crowded government campgrounds with running water, free firewood and the cacophony of radio music."
"An old man's memory is an dubious asset."
"Spring's bloom and green explosion, summer's tick and crackle in the forest, autumn's gilded pageant, the rumble and moan of winter gale these sounds, moods and scents of Canada kept me earthbound." Cumulatively, this is Bruce Hutchison's Walden Pond.
Nearing the close of a distinguished career that has seen Hutchison called "our resident conscience" and "the dean of Canada's political commentators, A Life in the Country available in November follows social books such as The Unknown Country (1943), Canada's Lonely Neighbour (1954) and The Unfinished Country (1985), geographic titles such as The Fraser (1950) and Canada: The Year of the Land, a little known but worthwhile B.C. novel called The Hollow Men (1944), an autobiography called The Far Side of the Street (1976) and a nostalgic second work of fiction published at age 80, Uncle Percy's Wonderful Town (1981).
[Autumn / BCBW 1988]
Believing that humans divorced from nature lose their vital juices, Hutchison, the only British Columbian to have earned three Governor-General's Awards, has maintained his contacts with gardening and nature at a Shawnigan Lake cabin throughout his long newspapering career.
Now Hutchison, 87-year-old editor emeritus of the Vancouver Sun, has gathered his bumper crop of memorable characters, woodshed ruminations and garden variety common sense for a lyrical as well as critical tribute to the seasons and the earth, A Life in the Country (D&M $18.95).
"Looking out the window today on the field the valley, the blue hills, and in memory, the cabin and the forest," he writes, "I regret my own numberless faults but not a life in the country." How the memoir has been written is as important as what it relates. Poised Wordsworthian flourishes are balanced by a very formal humility. A newspaperman's sardonic humour alleviates the seriousness of a practised editorialist. Hutchison, in the tradition of the intellectual rustic, is planting some clear thoughts for posterity.
"In Canada, a nation so young, so close to the pioneers who made it, millions of kids have known nothing better than crowded government campgrounds with running water, free firewood and the cacophony of radio music."
"An old man's memory is an dubious asset."
"Spring's bloom and green explosion, summer's tick and crackle in the forest, autumn's gilded pageant, the rumble and moan of winter gale these sounds, moods and scents of Canada kept me earthbound." Cumulatively, this is Bruce Hutchison's Walden Pond.
Nearing the close of a distinguished career that has seen Hutchison called "our resident conscience" and "the dean of Canada's political commentators, A Life in the Country available in November follows social books such as The Unknown Country (1943), Canada's Lonely Neighbour (1954) and The Unfinished Country (1985), geographic titles such as The Fraser (1950) and Canada: The Year of the Land, a little known but worthwhile B.C. novel called The Hollow Men (1944), an autobiography called The Far Side of the Street (1976) and a nostalgic second work of fiction published at age 80, Uncle Percy's Wonderful Town (1981).
[Autumn / BCBW 1988]
Submitted on December 13, 2003 in By David.
