Wintering Over

Hugh Oliver is editor-in-chief at the OISE Press.

This ambitious four-part poetic saga about the Ottawa Valley focuses on
its settlement by the Irish and the Scots during the late 18th and 19th
centuries, and on its exploitation of its lumber. Part 1, from which the
book takes its title, is a first-person account of a wife’s travails
during a cold and lonely winter while her husband is away at logging
camp. Part 2 concerns a French Canadian, Cadieux, who casts in his lot
with the Algonquins and sacrifices himself to save them from an Iroquois
raid. Part 3, which runs too long, comprises a series of dramatized
anecdotes recited by Valley characters over the past two centuries. Part
4 (“The Breakwater and the Webb”) finds the author reflecting on her
habitat: “The early network of Valley clans held me, / rocked me in a
hammock, every web of the rope / protecting my flesh, every interstice
my spirit.”

In an extended poem of this nature, it is not surprising that the
quality of the verse is variable. However, when the author writes out of
her own experience, as in the last part, she produces some haunting
imagery and memorable lines.