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1919. Maybe 20. Under the clear, high, Manitoba sky a mother and child, hand in hand, are walking across a bridge. It is the Provencher Bridge. The bridge spans the Red River.

On one side of the river are the cathedral spire, the dome of the Jesuit college, and the cluster of dwellings that make up the pious, studious village of Saint Boniface. On the other side are the railway tracks, the drunks, and the arrogant pell-mell of Winnipeg's commercial centre.

The child in this scene - the opening scene of a book called La detresse et I 'enchantement (Montreal: Boreal Express, 1984) - becomes one of Canada's most important writers, Gabrielle Roy. Indeed, Roy, three-time winner of the Governor-General's award for fiction, recipient also of France's Prix Femina and many other prestigious prizes, is virtually a Canadian institution.

The dozen or so of her novels and collections of stories, most of them available in both English and French, are inevitable fare in university Canadian literature courses across this country. In 1983, her best known novel, Bonheur d'occasion (The Tin Flute) was made into a fine movie.

But new revelations about Gabrielle Roy indicate that we have not known her well.

English-Canadian fans of this sensitive, profound and beloved writer will have cause for sad reflection when they read La detresse et l'enchantement, Roy's posthumously-published autobiography. The revelations begin in the very first sentence.

"Quant donc ai-je pris conscience pour la premiere fois que j'etais, dans mon pays, d'une espece destinee a etre traitee en inferieure?" So when did I first become aware that I was, in my own country, a second-class citizen? (Translation mine. Her autobiography has not yet been published in English.)

It seems that the child on the bridge learned early about the problems of being French in Canada. When she and her mother (descended from Acadian pioneers) shopped in Winnipeg, they had very little money to spend. Mr. Roy, Gabrielle's father, had lost his government job for supporting the right of Franco-Manitobans to education in their own language

In school, the other children laughed at little Gagrielle's [sic] accent when she spoke English. Yet, driven by a desire to avenge her family and people, young Roy studied hard and came first in the province of Manitoba year after year in both English and French! As an adolescent, Gabrielle Roy actually regarded the English as "les ennemis"- the enemies.

Later apparently Roy modified her extreme attitude, or outgrew it, because none of the early bitterness appears in her fiction. Yet certainly in The Tin Flute the rich are usually English, the poor inevitably French.

Then too, when she writes about Eskimos (Windflower) and other cultural minorities (Children of My Heart), Gabrielle Roy shows great compassion for the dispossessed and betrayed. She knew them.

Source: The Barrie Banner, December 11, 1985.

Courtesy of The Barrie Advance.