For My Children's Children by Evelyn Cartier Springett, 1938 (on CD)
Cat No.: CA0433: (See also product CA0433-DL for this "book" as a downloadable file and save the mailing cost.)
At the most superficial glance you might think of this as the auto-biography of an early pioneer, moderately well off, prairie wife, named Evelyn Cartier Springett, but that would be a misleading description and would woefully undervalue the book. A more meaningful description would be that it is a message through time to all and any of Evelyn’s descendants, both existing AND not yet born. In the words of her Preface, Evelyn’s own description is:
“My original idea was simply to write about the years I spent on a ranche in Southern Alberta and afterwards in Saskatchewan. On second thought, however, I decided to go back to my childhood days and say something about our family life and upbringing, touching but briefly on an older generation. In this way the next generation may learn a little about their immediate forebears and the kind of people they were.
My book is neither history nor fiction, and it has no special theme, wandering as it does over the years; and what to call it has been a difficulty. If the title I have chosen does not excite curiosity as to its contents, neither will it deceive with false hopes of something more thrilling than I have been able to write.
"For My Children's Children" I have written, and I shall let it go at that.”
How excited Your curiosity is going to be depends very much on you - the reader:
If you are looking for a genealogy of numerous people whose family names are written large in Canada’s relatively short history (including one who is a Father of Confederation) and some whose deeper roots spread back into England’s and Scotland’s more distant past. Then Your curiosity is going to be excited.
If you want a first hand account of the day to day realities of the life of the earliest settlers of the Canadian southern Prairie Provinces, starting shortly after the massive herds of Buffalo had been laid waste. Then Your curiosity is going to be excited.
If you want to read a fascinating story of the extraordinary events of a relatively ordinary wife and mother who was fortunate enough to be able to take an interest in the life and times of others in her surroundings instead of being wholly preoccupied by the simple necessities of maintaining life. Then Your curiosity is going to be excited.
We are always looking for suitable books representing all of Canada, but there is a notable lack of early historical writing from the Prairie Provinces. Considering the tales in this book it could ONLY be written by a person who could afford the help which would enable them to fully appreciate their surroundings - but not so much so that they were completely isolated from the reality. Evelyn might have been the only person who was just so situated, AND had the ability and incentive to write down these experiences in such an interesting and (mostly) nonjudgmental way. This, we feel, may be the reason for the apparent dearth of similar works.
In keeping with Evelyn’s stated intent, this tale tends to ramble around, just as you might expect a verbal “elder’s” tale to do in recounting the stories of their life. Yet Evelyn never seems to lose her place and will eventually return to where she turned off her primary path and complete her theme.
In some ways this book should be compared to the earlier publication by Suzanna Moodie, “Roughing it in the Bush” the only differences being that Suzanna’s adventures occurred while Ontario (then West or Upper Canada) was being pioneered. Also Evelyn’s book is, at least in part, an appreciation of much to be thankful for - not a “warning” designed to scare off other would be pioneers.
We thank Jennifer Stead, this beloved book’s current “host” and a related family member, for her generosity in allowing us to make this reproduction. Several generations of the “Children” of this book's title show their appreciation for this wonderful legacy by dedicating this digital edition to the loving memory of "grandmother" Evelyn, laid to rest in 1950.
Special Considerations:
As usual we have made this digital edition computer searchable and then hand corrected the OCR results to provide the most accurate rendering of the text possible. We have noticed however, that the author has her own way of spelling some words. This does not appear to be a “stumble” because every occurrence of these words is the same.
It is our policy to remain faithful to the original - other than in very special circumstance. In consequence your “searches” may fail if they include one of Evelyn’s special words. Perhaps the most obvious example is the word “ranche,” which is used quite frequently but does not appear in any dictionary we consulted.
No. of CDs is: 1 ; Format is: PDF ; Searchable?: YES;
FastFind: Yes; ISBN No.: 978-1-927503-50-8 ;