Great Depression Memoir (Why Shoot the Teacher)

   Max Braithwaite. Why Shoot the Teacher (1965) Autobiography dressed up as fiction. The names have been altered, and probably some details too, to prevent too easy identification of the people whom Max met and worked for in his first job. He detrains at “Bleke”, Saskatchewan, and avoids frostbite on the ride to the school only by running behind the wagon from time to time. A foreshadowing of his mostly depressing experiences teaching in a one room school in the middle of the Great Depression.
    His teacherage consists of two rooms partitioned off in the school basement, populated by mice. There is no human company within sight after the children go home. Nor a tree. The farmers are barely able to feed themselves and their livestock, never mind a teacher, yet they manage to eke out some entertainment and pleasure at a dance and the Christmas pageant. At the end of the school year, Max decides to leave. He notes that never once did Lyle King, the school-board chair, call him by his name. Max doesn’t mention his name either.
    The book was made into a film, available on Youtube. It reconstructs the book into a story. Braithwaite’s book is a series of extended anecdotes and musings about his job, education, the economy, the society that surrounds him, and so on. It adds up to his experience of the Depression, and has the ring of truth. Braithwaite developed a reputation as a humourist, but there’s damn little humour in this book. The title has nothing to do with the book. But it’s worth reading all the same, especially if you want to get a feel for what it was like to live through the Depression on the Prairies. **½