The Fledgling Years: A Childhood on the Prairies

Andrea Geary is an agricultural reporter for The Manitoba Co-operator.

This memoir is Macklon’s account of his childhood spent in various
small Saskatchewan communities during the 1920s and 1930s. In a rambling
style he writes of attending one-room schools, summer fairs, baseball
games, community dances and hockey matches, and includes detailed
descriptions such as those on some of his teachers’ unique
characteristics as well as others on the toilet facilities at school and
at home. In fact, he manages to squeeze in a sentence or two on almost
everything of note that ever happened to him during his first twenty-odd
years.

While giving the book a conversational tone, Macklon’s presentation
is quite disorganized and, thus, makes following any theme difficult.
For example, within one chapter he jumps from one topic to another; from
the Depression to today. This appears to be his first book and likely
was a retirement project for the former teacher.