The Quarter-Pie Window

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

The Tinderbox (Porcupine’s Quill, 1982) told the story of the tragic fire in which 14-year-old Emma Anderson and her younger brother John were orphaned and left in the keeping of their previously unknown aunt, Mrs. McPhail. Now they have come with her to the bustling town of York: raw country children, completely unused to town ways, and still shattered by the recent loss of their parents. Emma must work as a maid in Mrs. McPhail’s hotel — thankless, dirty, and unpleasant work she finds it. John is luckier; a place is found for him in a neighbouring livery stable.

Emma’s view of her new situation is circumscribed by the quarter-pie window that lights her attic room, through which she looks out into a dark future — a view that is all her own and that she “shares with no one else.” Can she ever learn to be happy again in this strange new life?, she wonders. Will York ever begin to feel like home? The hustle and bustle of the hotel give the sad youngster a new interest in life, as she becomes aware of some of the undercurrents of her aunt’s business dealings. This vivid picture of life in Upper Canada in the 1830s is convincing in every detail, and is enriched by wood engravings by G. Brender a Brandis.