Biography & Autobiography Personal Memoirs
Man Proposes, God Disposes
Recollections of a French Pioneer
- Publisher
- Athabasca University Press
- Initial publish date
- Mar 2013
- Category
- Personal Memoirs, Adventurers & Explorers, Post-Confederation (1867-)
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781926836553
- Publish Date
- Oct 2012
- List Price
- $29.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781926836577
- Publish Date
- Mar 2013
- List Price
- $29.99
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Description
In 1910, young Pierre Maturié bid farewell to his comfortable bourgeois existence in rural France and travelled to northern Alberta in search of independence, adventure, and newfound prosperity. Some sixty years later, he wrote of the four years he spent in Canada before he returned to France in 1914 to fight in the First World War. Like that of so many youthful pioneers, his story is one of adventure and hardship—perilous journeys, railroad construction in the Rockies, panning for gold in swift-flowing streams, transporting goods for the Hudson’s Bay Company along the Athabasca River. Blessed with the rare gift of a natural storyteller, Maturié conveys his abiding nostalgia for a country he loved deeply yet ultimately had to abandon.
Maturié’s memoir, Man Proposes, God Disposes, appeared in France in 1972, to a warm reception. Now, in the deft and marvellously empathetic translation of Vivien Bosley, it is at long last available in English. As a portrait of pioneer life in northern Alberta, as a window onto the French experience in Canada, and, above all, as an irresistible story—it will continue to find a place in the hearts of readers for years to come.
About the authors
Vivien Bosley is a professor emeritus of French at the University of Alberta. Her translations from the French range from seventeenth-century feminism to Canadian political biography.
Robert Wardhaugh is an associate professor in the Department of History at University of Western Ontario and is the author of Mackenzie King and the Prairie West.
Excerpt: Man Proposes, God Disposes: Recollections of a French Pioneer (by (author) Pierre Maturié; translated by Vivien Bosley; introduction by Robert Wardhaugh)
From the edge of the plateau there was a splendid view: the Athabasca, flowing from the east, made a great curve in front of us and carried on towards the village. … At the moment we stopped, we could see lines of ten or fifteen sledges gliding on the trail made in the ice on the river. The view was so panoramic both to our right and our left, and also over the undulations descending towards the bank, that we took the decision right there and then to plant our flag on the spot, like explorers in an unknown land and to build our house there.
Editorial Reviews
"A delightful translation of Pierre Maturie's recollections of traveling to and settling in rural Alberta before WW1. Written in simple but poignant chapters, the narrative recounts a journey full of warmth, challenges, triumphs and sorrows in which victory over the land comes at a difficult price."
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