It Could have been Worse (1980)

     Peggy Holmes It Could have been Worse (1980) Chatty reminiscences of Peggy and Harry Holmes first and only two years on their homestead in northern Alberta. Peggy also tells of her childhood in England. Harry selected the homestead when he and three buddies went hunting up there, a romantically silly way to pick land. In the event, the Holmes's managed to prove the land, that is, clear the minimum amount and build a dwelling of minimum size, but they left immediately after that, and lived in Edmonton. The narrative is piecey, probably because it was cobbled together from stories Peggy wrote for and read on CBC Calgary.
      The events she relates are the usual mix of horror, tedium, and joy, and the book is interesting on that account. But Peggy’s lack of literary skill, evidenced in everything from poor organisation to flat and trite descriptions, takes away from the narrative. She is more of a teller of tales than a writer, which means that she was undoubtedly better on the air and in person. I don’t get a sense that I really know Peggy after reading this book: I know about her, and I speculate that she was a stubborn and wilful girl with a strong romantic streak, but that’s all. She had two miscarriages, but we don’t really know how these affected her, nor how it affected her relationship with Harry. I suppose she would consider inquiry after these matters an impertinence, but I want to know more than the facts of her life. It’s all very well to tell about the things you had to do to survive, but thousands of other people had to do the same things. What makes a life interesting is not what happened in it, but the person it happened to, and the people that mattered to them. Harry was Peggy’s great love, she says; but I get only the vaguest sense of what he was like. I still recall Susannah Moodie’s book, not just the events she relates, but Susannah as the personality that experienced the southern Ontario wilderness, and the fecklessness of her husband (who like Harry clearly had silly romantic notions about land). Peggy’s book is worth reading as one more record of the pioneer life, and that’s all. *1/2 (2002)