Sunny Side Up: Fond Memories of Prairie Life in the 1930s

Patricia A. Myers is a historian at the Historic Sites and Archives
Service, Alberta Community Development, and the author of Sky Riders: An
Illustrated History of Aviation in Alberta, 1906–1945.

Eileen Comstock’s second collection of prairie memories continues the
style begun by its predecessor, Aunt Mary in the Granary (2000), using
stories and remembrances to tell about life in rural Saskatchewan in the
1930s.

Comstock believes there is something different about prairie people,
and concludes it is their ability to laugh during hard times. She goes
about proving her thesis with a series of stories and anecdotes. All the
old favorites are here: church picnics, Saturday dances, school events,
shopping trips to town, rolling under the tent flap to sneak into
Chautauqua for free. Most stories perpetuate the familiar myth that
everyone was fine, everyone cooperated, no cracks showed in the veneer
of community solidarity. We learn little about what people really did,
how they really felt, what they really believed about each other.

Two chapters stand out among these tired stories; one on relief and one
on pests. These chapters are more successful because Comstock at least
hints at the humanness of her fellow sufferers. They get angry, they
feel humiliation, they find beauty in disaster. They think about people
in other parts of Canada who loaded boxcars with fruit, salt cod,
clothing, and vegetables, and sent them off to tiny western communities
sinking in the barrenness of the Depression.

Many of the entries are not credited, so the reader does not know where
they came from. Are they part of an oral history collection, for
example? Were they told to the author over a fence post? Some are simply
reprinted from a local history, Furrows and Faith. Without any kind of
verification, statements such as “by 1930 almost everyone had a car”
must be taken with some care. Is she talking about all of Saskatchewan
or a particular part? What would the source for this be?

Sunny Side Up adds nothing to our understanding of the Depression,
choosing instead to travel a well-worn yet shallow path.