The Seasons of My Youth

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

Dave McIntosh’s first autobiography, Terror in the Starboard Seat, outlined his experience as a combat navigator in a Mosquito fighter in World War II. His second book portrays the years before the War, growing up during the 1930s in Quebec and New Brunswick.

Winters were spent in Stanstead, Quebec, summers in Jacksontown, New Brunswick (near Woodstock). McIntosh’s anecdotes are well written and lively, spiced with dialogue and vivid details. He describes his hockey games with a local Stanstead team; his bridge games with his card-loving mother, younger brother, and sister before the children could read; his train trip alone to the New Brunswick farm with the constant worry about finding a bathroom in time. Much of the book concentrates on farming in New Brunswick, offering detailed descriptions of the different types of farm machinery used in the ‘30s and memorable portraits of work on a family farm. An entertaining description of a car trip from Quebec through the States to the farm is included: mother driving and the children competing with each other and acting grown-up. McIntosh often succeeds in representing the child’s point of view, although the child’s view rarely stands alone and is usually complemented by an adult’s.

The autobiography is very personal and its range of experience very limited, yet its appeal is enhanced by fictional colouring (mostly dialogue) and the details of farm operations and family life. Adults remembering their own childhood in the 1930s, or their days on a farm, will enjoy The Seasons of My Youth as much as young adults will.