Land of the Fireweed

          Journalist Hope Morritt’s Land of the Fireweed is the story of some of the people, including herself, who were involved with the Alaska Highway when it was new. . .   Morritt’s personal account begins as she takes a civilian clerical job in Whitehorse with the Canadian Army command called the Northwest Highway System. 

          Morritt, who was born in Edmonton , writes an adventurous and unpretentious story.  . .  It is easy to be lulled into her rhythmic and relaxed writing style, and into the colorful lives of the strong individuals she meets, befriends and loves. 

          Best of all are the black-and-white photographs in the book.  Collected from scrapbooks and archives, they show some of the back-breaking and heart-breaking work that went into the Alaska Highway , including labor on some of the 133 bridges and several thousand culverts.  It was a massive job and Morritt has made an admirable record of important history through a personal narrative that gently lifts and transport readers back in time.

          In an afterword, Morritt says a detailed account of all the road projects and the people who made them possible would take volumes.  Instead of a heavy, statistical account, she wanted to write her memories of “the erratic, nervous” period after the war when the Canadian Army took over maintenance of a vast stretch of the Alaska Highway .

          Today, she says, the road is paved in most places – less than 160 kilometers is gravel.  There were people along the road who objected to the  paving, in the hopes  of keeping it gravelled to reflect a country still rugged.  “To this hardy group, a windshield peppered with stones is like a trophy telling the world they have travelled the length of the highway and survived,” she writes. 

                                                             Margaret Mironowicz

                                                    Toronto Globe and Mail – May 2, 1987

Bohunk Road

          The protagonist of Bohunk Road is a young Ukrainian woman, Nat, who grows up ashamed of her home and parents.  Edmonton, during World War Two is full of American soldiers, and Nat determines to find one who will take her far away from the world of tar-paper shacks and old world customs.  She meets Jack Douglas, and they fall in love, but Fate keeps them apart. 

          The year  of separation is described well by Hope Morritt, who understands the agonies and confusion of youth.  When the young people finally find each other and begin their life together, Nat begins to appreciate what she has left behind.  She misses her parents’ dependable love, and feels especially lonely for her grandmother to whom she was close.   As she grows and copes with children and an ailing husband, she makes the slow and painful return to her roots. 

          The other characters in this story are well-depicted, from Nat’s brother, Mike who loves  his family, and, despite his professional standing, is not ashamed of them; to her friend, Lee, who had all the advantages Nat craved, but who nonetheless leads an unhappy life.  The ethnic flavor is authentic, and if the plot seems at times contrived, it is amply compensated in the quality of the writing.

                                                Sheila Martindale

                 Canadian Authors’ Association, London Branch Newsletter

                                                 November 1987