Storied Landscapes: Ethno-Religious Identity and the Canadian Prairies (review)

Frances Swyripa writes that ‘the prairie West has been a place of remarkable ethno-religious diversity, making it unique in the history of Canada.’ Her thesis in Storied Landscapes is that prairie immigrants of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had a peculiarly complex relationship to the land, to their ethno-religious communities, and to their overseas ancestors. She even goes so far as to intimate that prairie multicultural experience is key to understanding Canadian identity as a whole. Her major groups in this study are Mennonites, Icelanders, Doukhobors, and Ukrainians, with lesser attention directed at Jewish, Finnish, and German communities, among others.

There is no doubt that these communities have fascinating histories in the Canadian West, and their differences – and remarkable collaborations – provide ample opportunity for stimulating analysis. Swyripa, however, is not an argumentative scholar; this study is descriptive and sometimes too obvious. Her method is to introduce a theme – for example, symbols used by these communities or the personalities of their leaders – and then to advance through the groups, reporting her findings in each case. Seldom does a group receive more than a paragraph at a time in this study, and because the book proceeds in this manner, there is much repetition of similar material in subsequent chapters. As a historian, Swyripa should be able to query troublesome terms such as ‘founding father’ or ‘martyr,’ but instead she largely accepts the myths of these groups at face value. She rarely probes the sometimes harsh realities behind the notion of ‘freedom,’ for example, or ‘pilgrimage’ that many of these peoples promoted.

Her title, invoking both narrative and environment (so important still in prairie existence), is promising, but the result is disappointing. Swyripa does not have nearly enough to say about the particular stories told in the west, nor the precise ways in which the land has entered the consciousness of westerners. For the most part she depends upon conventional, official rhetoric and documents – the plaques on statues, the speeches made by governors general – rather than digging into the authentic narratives, rich and lively, created within these communities. The characters of ‘founding fathers’ Peter Verigin, Isaac Barr, and Count Esterhazy are inherently interesting, even bizarre, but we learn too little about them.

The author provides detailed data and a solid overview which would be helpful to people who know little of prairie history; to those of us on the prairies nearly everything here is well-known. (The photographs, however, are excellent and helpful.) Swyripa is unusual for a prairie person in that she appears to have an aversion to controversy. There are so many questions that she does not ask. How seriously should we take the Icelandic fondness for the stereotype of the Viking? Just how pivotal was the fertility of Manitoba farmland for immigrant Mennonites? How different are prairie festivals and monuments from those in Ontario? For a fuller examination of the way these communities interacted, I would turn to literary works such as Martha Ostenso’s Wild Geese or Bruce McManus’s Selkirk Avenue. William Kurelek’s paintings present a vivid, even shocking sense of this era, and a short visit to St. Peter’s Abbey in Muenster, Saskatchewan, will give you an immediate impression of the ambitious personalities of the German Roman Catholic monks who settled there. A page or two of fiction by Armin Wiebe or David Bergen will provide a colourful sense of Mennonite uniqueness.

At the beginning of this study, Frances Swyripa provides a personal glimpse into her youth, exploring the prairies with her family. That brief scene of the genesis of her interest in this scholarly pursuit is intriguing and animated. She is very capable of being a stylish writer. She knows her area. But this book as a whole is too flat and unstoried, which the prairies most assuredly are not.