It’s a family history for all ages but amazingly it begins with one of Lyn's animal friends Gypsy, an orphan gibbon ape, who spent a whole year in her grade six class. Who would think that Gypsy would lead to the family of two of her students asking her to help them write their family history. The book would be 40 years in production. Their great grandfather Sam was a charismatic Irish immigrant, an explorer, gold prospector, buffalo hunter, fur trader and early farmer. Their Metis grandmother Jane rode a Red River cart across the prairie and its rivers at 16. She raised 14 children, her 14th at the age of 50. She grew vegetables, dried buffalo meat, tanned buffalo hides, and decorated clothes and moccasins with beads and porcupine quills. This book also has a miraculous ending: Sam and Jane’s grandson Sam Livingston 111, adopted out at two, was lost to the family for 64 years. He turned up in the Chemainus-Ladysmith area where he read an earlier version of The Ring called Tell me, Grandmother. This book led him to reunite with his dying sister who had been searching for her brother all her life. The Ring is written as a conversation between Grandmother Jane and one of her grandsons, the father of my two students. I hope it will encourage readers to write their own family histories, especially of differing cultures. The book emphases the contributions of women to Canadian history, especially aborigional women.
Excerpt
It didn’t look like an ordinary wedding ring. It was solid gold,
encircled by a band of black enamel. Set into the band were three
words: IN MEMORY OF. I’d often asked Grandmother Jane what those
words meant. In memory of what? She had never told me or anyone else
the story of her ring.
Professional Reviews
Canadian Materials
This family history illuminates the settling of the Canadian prairie
provinces, from the Red River Settlement (Winnipeg) to Fort Calgary. The
reader senses the courage and energy of the explorers and voyageurs, the
frustrations of the Métis, the desperation of peoples dependent on
buffalo, and the pride of the pioneers who survived and thrived. The
authors achieve an excellent balance between the facts of history,
nuggets of how people lived, and narrative suspense. Plentiful maps and
pictures enhance the reader’s understanding of the text. Lyn Hancock is
a well-published author, and co-author Marion W. Dowler is the wife of
the grandson in the narrative.
The novel is structured on a grandson (who seems about
12-years-old) asking his grandmother questions. He first asks, “Tell me,
Grandmother, what did Great-great-grandfather Joseph Howse do to get his
name on the map?” The first edition of this book is entitled /Tell Me,
Grandmother/. Howse discovered a pass through the Rocky Mountains -
Howse Pass which is near Howse River and Howse Mountain - making him the
first fur trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company west of the Rockies.
When he went back to England, leaving his Cree wife and child in
Rupert’s Land as per Hudson’s Bay Company regulations, he wrote /A
Grammar of the Cree Language/.
The stories remain biographical but illuminate important historical
factors and events in which the family is not directly involved, such as
the Riel Rebellion, in a natural and interesting way. For example,
Grandmother Jane’s family crosses the North Saskatchewan River at
Batoche, where, in the future, Gabriel Dumont will ferry travelers
across in a scow and fight in the Battle of Batoche. These details often
poignantly enhance the reader’s understanding of history.
The core of the story is the relationship between Sam Livingston
and Grandmother Jane: their love, their adventures, their
accomplishments, and their progeny. The authors generate suspense with
the grandson’s frequent request to know more, especially about her
strange ring, and Grandmother Jane’s refusing to satisfy his desire.
This edition is 235 pages long, but the epilogue ends on page 159,
making it easily short enough to read aloud in the classroom. Pages
160-235 are primarily black-and-white photographs of relevant people and
places, but include chapters on finding a long lost family member and
ghost sightings.
The book strongly portrays pride in Métis heritage, effectively
communicates the transformation of prairie life from nomadic to settled,
and allows the reader to absorb history and culture in an entertaining
and educational manner.
The Ring is highly recommended to all Canadian prairie or Métis
children and wherever the history of the Canadian prairies is taught.
Even Canadian history students at the university level will benefit from
the reading the detail and sweep of this historical biography, aided by
its comprehensive index.
Highly Recommended.
Shelbey Krahn is a teacher-librarian and manages the Curriculum
Resource Centre at Nipissing University in Sudbury, ON.
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
The Manitoba Library Association ISSN 1201-9364 Hosted by the University of Manitoba
.
Woman Writer
Reviewed by Jean Morris.
I remember seeing a film, starring Paul Muni,
entitled Hudson’s Bay. That was around 1942 and
I also learned about The Hudson’s Bay Company
and Canada in history lessons at school. This is
why I wanted to review this intriguing book and
the fact that my in-laws are named Dowler.
Born in Cirencester in 1774 Joseph Howse, at
the age of twenty-one, sailed for Rupert’s Land
(Canada) on a ship called the King George. Having
had a good education and able to read and
write, he got a job as a clerk for The Company of
Adventurers of England, which was a fur trading
company.
A ‘Metis’ grandmother named Jane narrates
The Ring. Her grandfather was the Englishman
and her grandmother a Cree Indian. It is a story of
gold prospecting, buffalo hunting, trading with the
Indians and Joseph Howse, the first fur trader for
the Hudson’s Bay Company west of the Rockies. It
tells of crossing the prairie in an ox-cart and raising
a family in a sod hut, of the pioneers and some of
the founding fathers of that part of Canada and how
the name of Howse is very much part of its history.
There are many black and white photos showing
places and the development of this incredible family,
up until the present day. The ring, given to Jane by
her husband, symbolizes their undying love for each
other and remains as a legacy to their many descendents.
As family histories go, this is one of the best I have
ever read.
Rocky Mountain Outlook
Throughout the history of Western Canada, the role of women has been largely overlooked.
Such is the case of Jane Mary Howse Livingston, a Métis whose famous grandfather, Joseph Howse, and husband, Sam Livingston, one of Calgary’s leading citizens, are well-documented and remembered in southern Alberta.
Howse, a Hudson’s Bay Company fur trader, explorer and linguist, crossed the Rocky Mountains by way of Athabasca Pass 200 years ago and opened the first HBC post west of the Rockies. He is remembered in the naming of a pass, a river and a mountain, all of which carry the Howse name.
Howse spent a year alongside the Columbia Valley from 1810-11 trading with the Kootenay before returning east across the Great Divide.
Move forward to today, when the 200th anniversary of Howse’s accomplishments are being recognized by his descendents Aug. 20-22 with a small celebration at Waterfowl Lakes, located along the Icefields Parkway south of Howse Peak.
Livingston, an Irish-born prospector, buffalo hunter, farmer and trader, was the namesake of a skyscraper, a fish hatchery, a federal building and a school, all of which are in Calgary.
A large bust of Livingston, with his characteristic hat, flowing hair and beard greets visitors at the Calgary International Airport with a plaque that describes Livingston as Calgary’s first citizen.
In all of that, the name of Jane Mary Howse Livingston – Livingston’s Métis wife and Howse’s granddaughter – has all but been lost.
However, a re-released, expanded and revised book, The Ring, originally published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985 as Tell Me, Grandmother serves to remind us that women’s work built the prairies.
“It was this lack of information about Jane and also the attitudes about her being Métis,” Lyn Hancock, said recently.
“One of the aims of the book is to give you pride in many cultures. Métis have been called half-breed for so long, but they should be double-breeds because they have two cultures, not half of one. I think the book has been helpful in changing attitudes,” she said.
Jane was born in the Red Deer River Settlement on July 8, 1848, the seventh of 13 children of Henry and Janet Howse. They lived in a one-room shanty until the family crossed the prairies to Fort Victoria, east of Edmonton along the North Saskatchewan River. Henry Howse was one of the Hudson’s Bay Company employees tasked with building the post, which opened in 1864.
It was there at Fort Livingston that Jane and Sam met. They married in 1865.
They lived at the McDougall Mission at Morley, a stint along Jumpingpound Creek and finally a spot along the Elbow River a few kilometres upstream of the confluence of the Bow and the Elbow River where the North West Mounted Police were establishing a fort.
Through all of this, Jane made candles, soap, clothing, meals, raised 14 children and gardened – all of the chores that allowed Sam to prospect, farm, trade and hunt.
They were linked together in life and tasks and, after Sam’s death, by the gold mourning ring Jane wore inscribed with the words “In Memory Of”.
Hancock described The Ring, written from the perspective of one of Jane’s grandsons, Dennis, as a saga of Canadian history.
“There’s 200 years of history and geography in it. We’ve got buffalo hunting, gold, farming, trading, mechanization and geographically, we’ve got links throughout North America.
“While Sam is crossing the American prairie, Jane is crossing the Canadian prairie,” she said.
It is a story that is still alive in the Livingston house at Heritage Park and at the Glenbow Museum, where both Sam and Jane, along with Jane’s ring, were included as part of its Mavericks exhibition.
It is also a story Hancock said connects relatives, generations and joins the past to the present and has served to bring descendents together, such as in the case of siblings Dorcy Samuel Letourneau (Sam Livingston III) and Myrtle Livingston Hergert.
Dorcy and Myrtle were separated in 1921 when Dorcy was two. Their widowed mother could not afford to keep both children and she gave her son up for adoption.
Their mother tore a photograph of the two children in half, giving each child the half with their picture on it.
For 66 years, both brother and sister kept their halves safe, until The Ring was first published in 1985 as Tell Me, Grandmother, led Dorcy to re-connect with his sister and together they rejoined the jagged edges of their photograph.
This is how history should function, bringing the past and the present together, while working to change attitudes and erase ignorance, said Hancock.
Leaving The Ring as the out-of-print Tell Me, Grandmother would have been a shame, but thankfully, Hancock dusted it off and shared a seminal Western Canadian story.
The Borderline Anti-Memory PastBook asks questions a diary does not ask and raises the questions to dialectics and answers them in a way a memory work does not answer questions.
325 letters my father wrote to my mother during his time in World War II.
Woven together in a timeline of events of three of his brothers, 5 brothers-in-law, and one cousin, all 10 of them were in WWII at the same time.
