The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place

The Challenge of Writing Bioregionally: Performing the Bow River in Jon Whyte’s Minisniwapta: Voices of the River

150 With these words, Jon Whyte introduces a poem he never completed, but one that raises intriguing questions about what it might mean to write from a bioregional perspective, especially for a poet like Whyte, for whom place meant literally everything. The following discussion first explores those aspects of Whyte’s idea of place that make him a candidate for the title “bioregional poet” and then examines the poetic strategies of his river poem, strategies that develop directly from this conception of place. First, however, it might be helpful to locate Whyte’s subject, Alberta’s Bow River, and then to place his poem within the context of his poetic career, since Whyte is far less widely known than some of his contemporaries such as Margaret Atwood (born two years earlier than Whyte, in 1939). Canada’s Bow River begins as drops of meltwater from the Bow Glacier, forty kilometers north of Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. Over the course of about two weeks, this trickle, augmented by nearly fifty tributary H a r r y V a n d e r v l i s t The Challenge of Writing Bioregionally Performing the Bow River in Jon Whyte’s Minisniwapta: Voices of the River Minisniwapta is a poem about the Bow River, the gentle green river which has always flowed—flowed longer than the Rockies have stood as the sentinels we believe them to be; always on the western edge of the small green world I have always called home. If the river seem [sic] to flow through you as you perceive this poem, consider that we are the landscape life flows through, the mind the mountains myth flows from, time the river whispering by. The Challenge of Writing Bioregionally 151 creeks and rivers, flows past the towns of Banff and Canmore, and through Morley, the largest town on the Nakoda (Stoney) Nation reserve east of the Rockies. (Whyte takes his poem’s title from the Nakoda name for the river.) After flowing through the city of Calgary, the Bow River ends, 587 kilometers from its source, at its confluence with Oldman River. Here the two streams join to form the South Saskatchewan, which then carries those drops of glacial meltwater to Lake Winnipeg, and later into Hudson’s Bay. The upper reaches of this river define the Rocky Mountain valley, which Banff poet Jon Whyte always considered his home. From 1941 to 1956, Whyte grew up a few feet from the river, in the home of his aunt and uncle, Catherine and Peter Whyte. Both were painters and passionate cultural historians of life in the Rockies. Together they founded Banff’s Archive of the Canadian Rockies in 1965. By 1968 the archives had developed into the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, where Jon Whyte’s papers are now held, along with thousands of other documents, artifacts, and photographs crucial to understanding the region’s human history. For Jon Whyte, those early years in Banff created deep roots. After completing master’s degrees in English (at the University of Alberta in Edmonton) and communications (at Stanford) he made a very deliberate Upper reaches of the Bow River Valley, Alberta, Canada Harry Vandervlist 152 decision to pursue his adult life and work in Banff: he even precisely notes the date, describing himself as “reborn, Banff, June 23, 1968” (Anson). Rather than following his friends and contemporaries to larger centers such as Toronto or London, Whyte remained in the small town of Banff until his death from cancer in 1992. Throughout these years, he documented the Bow Valley by writing and editing ten works on local history and Rocky Mountain artists; by contributing weekly columns to the Banff newspaper, The Crag and Canyon; and by working as a curator for the Whyte Museum. The Canadian critic W.H. New sums up this eclectic activity when he describes Whyte as not only a poet, but also “a journalist, regional historian, museum curator, and specialist in the topography and representation of the Banff area.” From 1970 on, Whyte advocated protection of the valley’s environment, first as an executive member of the Bow Valley Naturalists (a group founded in 1967) and later as a trustee of the National Parks and Wilderness Association of Canada (McIvor). However, his activist and interpreter roles were never entirely separable from his work as a poet. Through most of his adult life, Whyte worked...