All Posts Tagged With: "Timothy Findley"
The heroism of Al-Khabaz, Swartz & the Maple Spring
Literature and life lessons help to understand activists
Swartz (Boston Wiki Meetup/Flickr)
In Timothy Findley’s The Wars, a young officer, Robert Ross, defies orders and releases horses confined in a barn. It is WW1 and he is in an area of France being shelled by Germans. Releasing them is a way of saving them as the structure is an obvious target. Ross is an officer with the Canadian Field Artillery and it’s his love of animals and justice that motivates him. It’s also his last act before desertion.
Findley’s assertion was that Ross’ actions were heroic in context. His liberation of the horses is cast against the shadowy psychopathy of WW1, a psychopathy so hideous it kept high-ranking military men from touring the front. Had they done so, the carnage of the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele might not have materialized. More soldiers, from all forces involved, might have made it home.
The Wars is timely because it seems conventional ideas about heroism are atomizing before our eyes. More relativistic ways of seeing things, perhaps brought on by the pervasive use of the internet, are transporting us to a world where the bad guys are everywhere and they’re usually in charge. It’s created some odd bedfellows and even odder instances of cross-pollination. The Arab Spring, a political uprising with some very discernible causes, was replicated in Quebec by the Maple Spring, a student uprising that had a lot of us here scratching our heads. Many were puzzled by the students’ adoption of a name whose power was clear but whose basis for comparison was wildly inaccurate.
Continue reading The heroism of Al-Khabaz, Swartz & the Maple Spring
Don’t ban The Wars
Concerned parents want award-winning novel removed from Southern Ontario classrooms
Every once in a while, a keen group of helicopter parents—or else, an overzealous collection of educators—decides that classic novels are no longer suitable for the classroom. Lest their teenagers suddenly become privy to the knowledge that the world is not, in fact, butterflies and rainbows, these guardians decide that books such as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn can’t be taught unless all of its dirty words are removed. Further to that, some have suggested that Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is far too controversial for the classroom and heaven help you if you let an adolescent of faith near The Handmaid’s Tale.
The latest target in this already-tired tirade is Timothy Findley’s The Wars, an award-winning Canadian novel about a young officer fighting in World War I. Parents in the Owen Sound area of Ontario are petitioning to have the book removed from all classrooms under the Bluewater District School Board’s jurisdiction. Why? In a meeting with board trustees, one parent remarked: “The book includes a number of very explicit and detailed descriptions of sexual encounters, most of them exploitive and violent.” It is “inappropriate to be presented to a class of young people,” she said.
Indeed, The Wars is not of the same creed as Goodnight Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The book depicts violent exploits (it is war, after all), a scene in a whorehouse, and an act of gang rape by Canadian soldiers. Undeniably, The Wars is not a feel-good tale. But then again, war stories rarely are.
Depriving students of the chance to read and discuss The Wars not only robs them of a great novel, but also denies them the opportunity to learn about and discuss contentious issues in a relatively safe environment. Whether aged 17 in an English class, or 21 and flipping through late-night TV, the term “whorehouse” might come up (*gasp*), so why not talk about it in a controlled setting?
Many students in Grade 12 (the year during which the novel is typically taught) are gearing up to head to college, university, or enter the workforce in a few months. By that time, unfortunately, there will few people around to cover their ears if someone says a curse. High school students should be guided, not coddled.
