Cyclone

Jane M. Wilson is a Toronto-based chartered financial analyst in the
investment business.

To the suggestion that her daughter study Canadian history rather than
the dates and battles of British monarchs, Agnes responded stiffly,
“There isn't any.” This tale of a family in Regina in the early
1900s is a testament to the contrary.

Hard times and an ineffectual and economically foundering husband have
brought Agnes and her family from Manchester to the Canadian prairies.
Despite her struggle to maintain middle-class respectability, Agnes’s
family slides into working class, but her standards never waver: “We
are part of the British Empire still.” Corsets are de rigueur, and a
certain decorum must be maintained. When the destruction of the Great
Regina Cyclone of 1912 brings paying boarders from different
backgrounds, Agnes treats them as an expanded family. The differing
attitudes toward Toronto, the Empire, and the start of the Great War
echo today’s political arguments. How World War I went from an
expected few months’ lark for young men to a senseless carnage is one
of the most vivid depictions in the book.

Agnes’s character is reflected in the book’s restrained,
unsentimental style that draws the reader from the first page. Although
this is a work of fiction, it is a wonderful chronicle of Canadian
social history with a Western perspective.