LEDUC, Alta. -- Acclaimed Canadian author Robert Kroetsch, whose
fanciful tale of an Alberta man travelling the countryside with his
stud horse won a Governor General's award, has died in a car
accident.
RCMP confirm the 83-year-old was killed in a crash that happened
at a rural intersection southeast of Edmonton near Leduc on Tuesday.
Police say five other people were injured -- one critically.
"He was a great storyteller and great listener and very generous
and a warm-hearted person," said Linda Cameron of the University of
Alberta Press, Kroetsch's last publisher.
"He had the ability to make you feel like you were the only
person around while he was talking with you."
Kroetsch was perhaps best known for his 1969 novel "The
Studhorse Man," which won the Governor General's Literary Award.
The book details the often fantastical adventures of wily Hazard
Lepage and his quest to preserve the bloodline of his rare blue
stallion. The book is part tall tale and part mythical journey set
in barns, beer halls and bathtubs and helped move Prairie fiction
resolutely away from the dour realism of a previous generation of
writers.
Kroetsch followed that up with 1973's "Gone Indian" and 1975's
"Badlands."
Born in Heisler in central Alberta, Kroetsch graduated from the
University of Alberta, then worked in the Canadian North, several
western provinces and the United States before he returned to
Alberta, where he lived in a retirement community in Leduc.
"I spent many years travelling around the world -- but I never
left Alberta," Kroetsch said earlier this year. "It has always
been a country of my imagination. I love the stories, the landscape
and the people."
He published nine books of fiction, 14 books of poetry and seven
non-fiction works.
"I would characterize Robert as a western voice, because I think
the voice is different in different parts of the country," Cameron
said.
"Robert told us stories about ourselves and where we are from,
and everybody could identify with some of Robert's stories and his
poetry."
Kroetsch was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 2004 and,
earlier this year, received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta
Distinguished Artist Award.
Cameron said Kroetsch was writing right up until his death and
has left at least one work in progress. Cameron said she was to meet
with him later this week about his latest manuscript, a novella.
"Right now that is not anything we are thinking about," she
said. "But it is one of those things that, somewhere down the road,
there might be an opportunity ... to celebrate Robert's life
appropriately."
-- With files from Bob Weber