Pubs, Pulpits and Prairie Fires (review)

Thankfully, the 75th anniversary of the unemployed workers' On to Ottawa Trek has not been forgotten. In June 2010 Elroy Deimert, an ndp activist and instructor of English at Grande Prairie Regional College in Alberta, along with others made efforts to celebrate the Trek in each of the towns Trekkers visited in 1935 before being forcibly halted in Regina. Deimert's program included readings from Pubs, Pulpits and Prairie Fires, his book honouring the Trekkers, and "singing of labour anthems [and] folksongs of the era," according to his publisher.

Deimert deserves credit for trying to educate Western Canadians about the Relief Camp Workers strike, the On to Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riot. His book, unfortunately, isn't as engaging as the topic itself.

Pubs, Pulpits and Prairie Fires is not intended as an historical study of these iconic events of the Dirty Thirties. Rather, it's a fictional story of a present-day group of friends in Deimert's hometown of Grande Prairie who gather weekly at BJ's Bar and Cue Club to drink beer and talk about a most unlikely topic: the Trek and the Riot. Two characters, Robert "Doc" Savage and Matt Shaw, who are based on actual surviving Trekkers, visit the pub to relate their memories of these events.

Within this frame story — a kind of Canterbury Tales in a beer parlour — Savage and Shaw offer lengthy stories, which Deimert says are based on interviews he conducted with them. Occasionally, their accounts are briefly interrupted by a listener ordering another beer, or reacting with strong emotion, as when one woman "introduced her grandfather [Savage] with what I suspected were tears glistening in her fierce and pride-filled eyes." (231)

The cast of characters at BJ's Tuesday Night History Club includes Paul Wessner, the hub of the group, a "veteran history professor at the local college" (7) (Deimert's alter ego, who has changed his department from English to History); Daniella, a United Church minister imbued with the social gospel who ultimately provides the love interest; Sammy, an oilfield labourer and recovered crack abuser who provides both comic relief and a kind of spectral sounding board for Paul; and Charles, a West Indian ex-preacher who once struggled with the bottle and now tells Sammy, "You're going to be awarded a Ph.D. in history from BJ's Academy for piling it higher and deeper just like the rest of us." (196)

Deimert's book can't fairly be critiqued as a work of history. What can one make of repeated references to "Big Bill Hayward," and to US politician Joe McCarthy's House Committee on Un-American Activities? Since this is a work of fiction, Big Bill Haywood's name may be spelled any way the author likes, and Joe McCarthy can be transferred from the Senate to the House of Representatives. And when "Doc" Savage comments that a relief work camp "[r]eminds one a bit of Auschwitz," (233) who can quibble? After all, it's simply a character's line.

Students of the 1935 protests are fortunate to have the carefully researched and well-documented All Hell Can't Stop Us. The On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot by Bill Waiser of the University of Saskatchewan. Waiser's book has the added advantages of being a judicious account and an accessible, engaging story, and offers a more historically accurate view than Deimert's book.

For example, while Trek leader and Communist Arthur (Slim) Evans is a romantic hero for Deimert's Paul Wessner character, Waiser points out that the Communist Party "initially disapproved" of the Trek, did not promote the event until "some momentum" was gained, and "[e]ven then, it was more than a simple Communist event — if it ever was." (272-73)

In a comment on his sources, Deimert says of Waiser's book, published six years earlier than his, "I do not believe that there is anything substantial in [my] book that comes via Waiser. I have not had his book in...