Captain Kintail

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
author of Calling Texas.

Terpstra’s rambling poem gives an account of a dozen people, adults
and children, who annually retreat to a camp at Kintail on Lake Huron.
The work is mostly an exercise in the banal, with a few sprightly
devices (like putting only a scrap of conversation on some pages) and
one or two good anecdotes (like the one about a child who survived being
swept through a culvert by a flood). The sketch of George McKibbon, who
maps areas sacred to the Cree and Ojibway for use in hearings, is
interesting. There is a streak of Christian imagery in the poem,
implying that the characters achieve some kind of agape relationship, a
sacramental love, but the domestic tone of the poem doesn’t let the
religious dimension become too solemn: indeed, the reader is left
uncertain whether the retreat has some traditional spiritual value or
whether the spiritual references are just a way to symbolize secular
comradeship. At any rate, Terpstra hasn’t managed to invest his poem
with any poetic aura. Only the dedicated will grasp the full
significance of the trip to the summer retreat. This poem won the
CBC’s 1992 Literary Contest, but it seems rather slight.