Summer at Lonely Beach and Other Stories

Carolyn Hlus was a lecturer in English literature at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

Miriam Waddington’s first collection of short stories, Summer at Lonely Beach, draws upon themes that affect us all — love, death, loneliness, childhood — in settings as far-reaching as Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Jerusalem, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The stories, no doubt reflections of Waddington’s life, fall into two general categories: ethnic stories and social worker stories.

The ethnic stories are laced primarily with nostalgic reminiscences about the Jewish immigrant’s experience; they consider as well the experiences of other minority cultures such as Poles, Ukrainians, Scots, and Negroes. These stories are generally told by first-generation Canadians, who straddle the cultural chasm separating patients’ from society at large. In some instances, the stories depict cultural clashes resulting from inter-marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

The social worker stories deal not with ethnic groups in cultural conflicts but with social workers confronting their patients’ problems with unemployment, poverty, old age, and sickness. They provoke awareness of the social worker’s often ambiguous role and reveal the narrow line separating the social worker’s problems from those of the patients.

Waddington’s style throughout these stories is natural and unpretentious. Her characters are vivid, their actions realistic. Long accepted as a major Canadian poet, Waddington proves herself, in this collection, an accomplished short story writer, too.