One Day a Stranger Came

Ted McGee is a professor of English at St. Jerome’s College,
University of Waterloo.

One Day a Stranger Came is a political fairy tale. Busy, colorful
illustrations (stills verging on animation and expressive faces in
close-up) capture the idyllic harmony of three ethnically diverse
families farming neighboring properties. But each farm is in a different
country, and the three countries have been at war. Having made an
artificial peace, the “government” imposes artificial structures on
the families who have played, learned, planted, harvested, suffered, and
celebrated together. The eponymous “stranger,” a uniformed figure
with a twisted face and glasses that hide his eyes, delivers the
authorities’ orders for fences, separate forms of education, and a
tariff on their common water supply. Despite their children’s
resistance, the adults conform, thereby destroying social concord.
Thanks to the youngest children, however, a solution is found so that
“the three families [can sit] down to eat, happy that they [are]
friends once more, and ... [promise] each other never to let fences come
between them again.”

The happy ending of this tale has a realistic edge, for the families
recover the happiness they once enjoyed while obeying the laws imposed
on them. There is no triumph over evil, nor any reform of the powers
that be—the stranger’s government remains. The political
implications of this story seem to me defeatist and essentially
undemocratic. But, if readers stay focused on the values that the
characters live by at the end, this book should serve as the basis for
lively, diverse, and valuable conversation. Recommended.