The Athabasca Ryga

Boyd Holmes is an editor with Dundurn Press.

George Ryga (1932-87) was a prolific writer whose fame rests largely on
his 1967 play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. (This drama is acclaimed,
however, usually because its subject, the sufferings of Natives, is
considered morally enlightening. Rarely do critics ask whether Rita Joe
is good as a play.) The Athabasca Ryga brings together certain of his
stories, essays, and plays, as well as a novel excerpt; almost all are
from the early years of their author’s career. Most have never been
printed before, and most were written in Edmonton and the Athabasca
region of Alberta. Gregory prefaces the book with a description of
Ryga’s early life that is both clumsily written and, at 57 pages,
overlong.

The rest of The Athabasca Ryga is for the most part poor. The essays
are unclear and embarrassing: “I hold in my hands the kneeling man
planting a tomato bush, for he speaks to God as wisely as an astronaut,
flying into the eye of heaven! I sing the jingle-jangle songs of
today’s children, for they are more beautiful than we might ever have
been! I breathe deeply the growl and hum and bangle of life, for it
redeemed me from the silent despair that once threatened me.” Ryga’s
fiction is sometimes equally pretentious (“There was meaning to what
she said, like an ancient echo of a truth long forgotten but still
significant to a people who live off the soil”); when it is not, it is
competently written, but also flat and attenuated. The two plays seem
forced because of too much slang (“dunno,” “ya,” “sorta,”
“betcha,” “Yore no good”). To be fair, however, the structure of
these dramas is fairly tight, and they no doubt perform better than they
read. Finally, the book’s design, with its bland covers and inelegant
type, is amateurish. Ryga was only a minor author, but even his work
deserves better treatment than the designer provides.