ATTITUDE TOWARDS IMMIGRANTS

Attitude towards Immigrants

Attitude towards Immigrants

With Under the Ribs of Death we have travelled a considerable distance from the world of Connor's The Foreigner. Instead of being a New Eden for the immigrant, the West is still very much a Fallen World in Marlyn. But, it is not just the fifty-year interval separating the publication of these books, nor even the differences in perception between the two novelists, which makes the distance seem so great. After all, Kalman's situation in the former book is not so unlike Sandor's: both boys are children of Winnipeg ghettos, and both are abused by the society in which they grow up. And Marlyn's cynicism about the injustices of North American society is no more convincing, finally, than Connor's optimism about the brave new world the Prairie offers its citizens. What is ultimately significant, and tragic, about the two novels - and others like them - is that they remind us how uncertain, how full of illusion, and how imperfect the life of man really is, immigrant or not.

Eventually, tired, broke, and hungry, and with his ears spinning with advice he never seems to follow, he finds himself in Winnipeg among an army of the dazed and unemployed. Assured that he may always turn to the Salvation Army for help, he rejects friendly advice and finally does manage to find a job despite the "No Englishmen Need Apply" signs. Reginald even makes a small fortune from an almost-forgotten oil speculation, and so the tale ends happily. But, throughout his satire, Jarvis eschews sober moralizing and does not allow sentimentality to spoil his ridicule.

The hero of English-born Bernard J. Farmer's Go West, Young Man is also a fool, but he is saved at last by the love of a good woman. Peter Cochrane emigrates at a bad time (during the Depression) and his picaresque adventures in Winnipeg, "the bum's mecca, the drain, the cesspool of the floating population of the West" 17 do not endear this up-dated Remittance Man to his new home. He drifts from job to job, growing more and more despondent as his prospects dim and the rough knocks of unemployment and hunger take their toll. "It was every man for himself in Canada" (227) is the conclusion to this grim, if hackeyed, story.

Ironically, it is the "every man for himself" attitude of Major Bayliss which proves his undoing in John Herries McCulloch's Dark Acres. McCulloch, whose Scottish pride is evident in his historical romance of the Selkirk Settlers, The Men of Kildonan (1926), may have taken a secret delight in portraying the misfortunes of a pig-headed Englishman. In any case, Bayliss is temperamentally unsuited to be a pioneer. "He was not a man of importance, and never had been.... [He] lacked flexibility, and the capacity of make friends.... Bleak, curt, humourless, and stubborn, he fell into that vast category of impressive-looking mediocrities who ride to hounds in England." This unlikely farmer arrives in Calgary and is hoodwinked into buying poor land - ...