BOOKS

Ouistanding new novel woven
around lives of Native Indians

OME Canadian novelists seem
to find their native scene too
drab a setting for their work and
choose instead some alien back-
ground where, no matter how
vividly they present them, the
problems they probe are not
those of their own people.

Some, with an eye to the larger
audience abroad, so distort the
Canadian seene that they achieve

“no more resemblance to reality
than the romantic fallacies they
perpetuate. And others so pre-
occupy themselves with infinite
analysis of the shallow characters
they place in selected ‘settings
that they never touch the broad
canvas of real life which alone

can give immortals to our liter-
ature.

Hubert Evans in his new novel,
Mist on the River, does none of
these things.

His setting is our own Skeena
River country which he knows
and loves no less than the people
of whom he writes. His char-
acters are the Native Indians who
live along the river and go to the
Coast in summer to fish and work
in the canneries. Out of their
apparently simple but profoundly
troubled lives he has created one
of the finest Canadian novels to
appear in this or any other de-
cade.

The people of Mist on the River
come to life from the first page
because Evans has drawn them
as they are with rare sensitivity
and insight. His sympathy, temp-

ered by his understanding of the.

conflict between their traditional
way of life and the life the white
man has foreéd upon them, leads
him neither to idealize nor to
depreciate them.

This conflict, the impelling
force of the Native Indians’ own
existence, is the theme of his
novel.

53 es oe

June Pitts, who is determined
to escape the constricting life of
the village on the reservation and
find herself a place as the equal
of white girls in the city, has a
thousand prototypes in real life.
So unhappily, has Dot, the girl
of June’s crest, who yearns, for
the pleasures of the city and
takes them in the only easy way

®
man to another.

open to her, passing from one
Dot’s counter-
parts in life walk the streets of
Prince Rupert — and Vancouver
— as she does.

June finds an opening which in
life is rare indeed. For many
more Indian girls the road to the
city ends as it does for Dot, in a
shabby room on a shabby street.

Cy Pitts, June’s brother, also
wants to go to the city. But in
him the conflict between the lure
of the city and the pull of the
village is intensified by his love
for Miriam. And Miriam has been
reared in the old ways by her
stern, uncompromising grand-
father, Old Paul, the village chief,
whose hatred of the evils brought
upon his people by the white
man’s civilization leads him to
cling to the old ways as his only
despairing defense.

Through Dot, through little
Stevie, Dot’s son, who might have
lived had Cy been able to resolve
his problems as decisively as his
sister, Evans expresses the trage-
dies engendered by this conflict.

‘Cy, torn between his respect
for the traditional ways bred in
him by Melissa, his mother, :and
Matt, little Stevie’s grandfather,
did not insist that little Stevie be
sent to the sanatorium at Miller
Bay as the white doctor wanted.
He deferred to Melissa and Matt,
who knew only that those who
went to Miller Bay came home, as
Elora did, to die.

But the roots of the evil lie
deeper. Cy voices them from the
park bench in Prince Rupert —
and you know that his reproach-
ful words are Evans’ own:

“Oh, you white race! What
have you to do with us and what
have we to do with you? ...

“Our strongest you accept and
our weak ones you belittle. You
are so positive you are right and
we are wrong. You teach us
your ways, but you teach us also
to scorn our past which alone
can lift our heads and keep us
whole. We imitate and resist
you, depend on you and suspect
you. You shield us, like chil-
dren, but deal with us as lesser
men you cannot trust. Yoa are
the builders and the breakers
down. You think you under-

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stand us, but you will never
know what it is to be an Indian
in our land which you have
taken for your own.”
Pek He ae

Mist on the River is an angry
novel. It is a ery against the
government’s false paternalism
‘which neither fosters in the Na-
tive Indians’ pride in their own
culture nor creates the material
conditions essential to their tak-
ing their place as full citizens in
the future. It is a protest against
racial prejudice which tardily,
and then only partially, accords
Indians the franchise, but re-
stricts all except the most detez-
mined of them to work in certaia
occupations, just as there arc
hotels and restaurants where
they are not accepted.

The weakness of the novel is
that it exposes the evils but indi-
cates no real solution. ’ It closes
on a note of hope but‘the hope is
given no tangible form.

The weakness arises from the

-fact that Evans’ forcefully paint-

ed, sensitive canvas is lacking in
certain essential detail.

In life, the Native Indian peo-
ple have their organization, the
Native Brotherhood of British
Columbia. They have their close
ties with the United Fishermen
and Allied Workers Union,: with
whom they have a common

~ legacy of struggle. And Evans, as

a former fisherman and a mem-
ber of a fishermen’s union, knows
something of this struggle from
his own experience.

Yet nowhere in the novel is the
conclusion gf organization and
struggle drawn. The life of the
Native Indians at the canrery is
drawn from Evans’ own ex-
perience but it does not embrace
the organization which is a part
of that life.

We are given a picture of
Caleb, the Indian who is the go-
between in all dealings between
the company and the Indians.
But, although there is a sugges-

tion that Caleb uses his power.

and prestige among the Indians
to the company’s advantage, he is
largely a sympathetic figure.

There is no counterpart in

Evans’ novel of those other Na- .

tive Indian leaders’ who abuse

their power to the detriment of ©

their people and, because per-

petuation of their power depends

upon it, strive to keep their peo-
ple isolated from the progreszive
‘white organizations without
whose help the Native Indian
people can never achieve their
full rights.

Mist on the River would have
been a stronger novel had it been
drawn in this fuller perspettive.
It remains nonetheless, one of the
finest Canadian novels yet to ap-
pear and a major contribution to
our literature.

.As such, it should be read by
every reader of this paper (it is

obtainable here at the People’s

Cooperative Bookstore, 337 West
Pender Street, price $3.50). Its
wide circulation will be not only
deserved recognition of Canadian
talent but the assurance to Cana-
dian publishers that the publica-
tion of such novels is justified by
their reception, :

—HAL GRIFFIN.

This is a scene from the new Soviet film, Maxima, which will be
shown in Toronto this month and tour western cities in December. ~
Based on an authentic historical episode; the picture tells the story
of a Negro boy and the Russian sailors who rescued him from Am-

erican slave traders.

Every sin but never
virtue in the Egyptian

Hiss: wide and vulgar in a

manner that CinemaScope is
likely to make all too familiar,
The Egyptian is typical of its
kind.

Almost every twist of sin, sex

violence and religion which has

ever embellished a Hollywood
epic finds a place here. The re-
sult is two hours 19 minutes of
almost stupefying boredom, re-
lieved here and there by the
sight of old friends battling
gamely against their scripts.

The Egyptian of the title, play-
ed by Edmund Purdom after Mar-
ion Brando had read the script
and fled, is a foundling of royal
birth in ancient Egypt who be-
comes’ a physician, saves the

Pharoah’s life, ruins himself for
the sake of a Babylonian prosti-
tute, regains his fortune. abroad,
returns to warn Egypt that iron
has been invented by her enemies
and stays to take part in a palace
plot to poison the Pharoah—who
manages to invent something
lke Christianity before he dies
at about 1300 B.C.

Somewhere in the course of
these adventures, so discreetly
that I hardly noticed it, he con-
trives to become the father of a
boy by an adoring tavern-maid.

Purdom, a good-looking young
English actor, manages to suggest
that he could probably show us
some acting if the script called
for it.

Victor Mature finds the transi-
tion from ancient Roman slave to
still more ancient Egyptian sol-
dier just a matter of changing his

. clothes.

Michael Wilding, as the Phar-
oah, is supposed to be an epilep-
tic religious maniac. He struck
me as being merely horribly em-
barrassed.

Only Peter Ustinov, as always,

succeeds in imposing his person’

ality through the lush setting,
absurd goings-on and poor script.
His touches of humor make his
all-too-rare appearances refresi-
ing in a notably owlish picture.

be xt x

The new British picture, Father
Brown, Detective, enhances the
reputation of Alec Guinness, who
plays the priestly amateur detec-
tive, but not that of G. K. Ches
terton, who created the character.

For Guinness, practically sin-
gle-handed, works hard to make
the good father a human being of
some depth and subtlety instead
of a lay figure on which to hané
some rather dated Chestertoniat
quips and a muddled story for
which Chesterton cannot . be
blamed.

Surprisingly often he succeeds;
but the script, which retains much

of the authentic Chesterton man-
ner, is against him. ©

This story of a battle of wits
between a master thief (a duke
of course). who steals rare treas-
ures, and the poor Catholic parish
priest (aided by a titled widow
parishioner of course) who tracks
him down and redeems his sou
is much too anaemic. to survive
the rigors of a full-length feature-

Some of the quips, howevel,
get across, and Guinness makes
the most of them. Joan Green-
wood, as the widow, and Peter
Finch, as the master-thief, ¢22
make nothing of their parts, be
cause there is nothing to make
of them. .

On this showing Chesterton
must be written off. as a source
of film material.

—THOMAS SPENCER:

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 12, 1954 — PAGE 8