Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse

Bruce Hunter was a Toronto-based poet, editor and teacher.

Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse is a reprint of journalist Paul St. Pierre’s 1966 novel published by Ryerson Press. Set in the Cariboo country of north-central B.C., the book is, at its best, vivid, folksy and compelling. At its worst, it is draggy, clichéd, and off-putting.

St. Pierre has a good ear for dialogue that fails only when he tries to impose an aw-shucks posture on it. He’s got a journalist’s eye for the nitty-gritty of life and he portrays the underbelly of a small town from the drunk up to the judge — with more reverence for the former than the latter. He’s also got a journalist’s sense of Canadian history and social conscience. All these things considered, this is a good book for a high school or college Canadian studies or CanLit course.

The central conflict is this: a local rancher, sparely named Smith, gets mixed up in the murder trial of a local Indian whom he has hired to break a horse. Given the treatment of Indians in Canada as a whole and in B.C. in particular, the murder trial has significance in a larger context. St. Pierre fails to realize this story fully in a national, social context; but on the local, immediate level the story of the Indians is handled well, even wonderfully at times. His description of the dour local judge is a fine study in contradictions. His Indians are often crafty and poetic in response to the white man’s justice.

Ultimately, this is a story of trials: humans against nature, men against men — red and white. We need more writing of this sort. While St. Pierre gives his characters a sometimes shallow, journalistic treatment, he does finally deliver where so few have. This is material often overlooked by city-based authors; the book provides a valuable source of insight into the Cariboo country and its people. One other thing: Smith’s horse does get broken in the end, but this is no mere horse story.