Long Ago and Far Away: A Miramichi Family Memoir

In his thirteenth book, Long Ago and Far Away, Wayne Curtis uses the oral story telling tradition of the Miramichi to present a family memoir, beginning with Grandfather (Papa) Tom Curtis, whose memories as a log driver and hunter extended back to the 1880s. Curtis, who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in a three-generation home six kilometres from Blackville, writes, “I carry a part of him inside me even now. I feel this when I taste spruce gum, hear a mouth organ, see a bone-handled hunting knife or drive past a field overgrown with shrubs.”

 

In prose at times lyrical, at others spare, but always honest, Curtis, with a discerning eye for detail, describes the hardships and the joys of rural Atlantic Canadian life. Like the caribou herd Papa witnessed walking north on the frozen Cains River in 1921, never to be seen again, these traditions have long since disappeared.

 

Long Ago and Far Away, however, is far more than a nostalgic account of life on the Miramichi, “where the smell of gun smoke was steeped in the landscape and the autumn breezes.” Curtis transcends his roots to ask the big questions we all ask ourselves, no matter where our ancestral roots may be. How can we stay true to our cultural values in a modern society that promotes conformity and materialism? How can we maintain our identity and integrity?

 

At age eighteen, Curtis sold his .44-40 carbine and .22 revolver for a one-way ticket to “the promise of a better tomorrow” in industrial Ontario. But for him, “there was something superficial about the scene...I felt I was being slowly integrated into a plaster-of-Paris mould.” Ten years later he returned to the Miramichi, “a place that held recuperating powers for a soul that had been without nurturing and in need of meditation.” After his return, however, he found the lure of the hunting adventure, which he’d missed, no longer held the same thrill and he began to feel “tenderness toward all things living.”

 

While the term “coming of age” has become a cliché, Long Ago and Far Away could be considered a “coming of old age” story. With the accumulated wisdom of his grandparents and parents which he shares with his sons and grandsons, Curtis has forged his own unique path as a Miramichi River guide and as a Fredericton writer who David Adams Richards calls “the greatest unsung talent in the country.” After reading his memoir, I’m inclined to agree. —Margaret Patricia Eaton