Walk Alone Together: Portrait of a French-English Marriage

Margaret E. Kidd, formerly the Co-ordinator of the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute’s Daycare Centre, is now associated with the Child & Family
Services Review Board in Toronto.

Marriage in the 1950s has come to have an aura of romanticism, from the
joyful weddings and the arrival of sweet children, with mother in the
home and father happily putting up shelving. In the midst of bilingual
wranglings and the attention to Quebec’s political challenges, this
book is introduced as a portrait of a French-English marriage.

But the emphasis on the French-English aspects of the marriage is
minimal. This is the union of Protestant and Catholic, rural and urban
people, two people who are deeply in love but both possessed of strong
opinions: “Renaud’s French-Catholic large family country background
and voluble social life did not blend noiselessly with my Scottish
Protestant small family urban upbringing and subdued social leanings.”

The attention in the story is on the day-to-day struggles of a couple
working out their adjustments in the midst of building a home and
building a business to respond to the husband’s ambition and to
support them.

They move to the community where he knows everyone, and where his large
family is close by. She knows little about the country hazards of bad
weather, distance from support systems, and different social customs.
But she has a good sense of humor and a fresh and able skill to describe
the situations that arise.

This is no deep analysis of relationships. It is reminiscent of the
many nights that you waited endlessly for the husband who is delayed
while you finally feed the kids and put them to bed. At last he arrives,
worn out, and you feed him too, and put him to bed! It will recall weeks
when roads and storms put a limit to the supply of groceries, and
oatmeal, onions, and chicken did get boring. There is a story of
attending a special party, embarrassed by innocently wearing the wrong
outfit. Misunderstandings over language, especially business phone
messages, are here too.

This is a cheerful account of what we so often think of as
“traditional” marriage adjustment. Those of us who have weathered
the storms and reaped the rewards will find this story amusing and
memorable.