KELVINGTON, Sask. — Eyes wide and mouths silent, schoolchildren listen intently to Larry Warwaruk’s tales of mounted Cossack horsemen brandishing swords, and young Ukrainian men embarking on a new life in a young Canada.
Warwaruk shares a Ukrainian heritage with many of the students he sees daily as writer-in-residence in Saskatchewan’s Quill Plains region. With a flourish of accents and dramatic emphasis, the 58-year-old writer folds historical research about early settlements into Ukrainian folklore of woodland water spirits and the sensuous culture of food, flower gardens, dance and language.
Read Also
Fusarium head blight mycotoxin detector in the works
A PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan has been working on developing a method of detecting fusarium damaged kernels to ease the struggles of producers, agronomists and industry.
His own roots reach down into the “bush and swamp — God-forsaken country” of Manitoba’s Lake Winnipegosis, where his family homesteaded in 1903.
His message to prairie students is that western heritage is quite distinct from Eastern Canada.
“While Quebec, Ontario express one concept of what the country is, the Prairies are unique in that they’re neither English nor French but European,” said the author of The Ukrainian Wedding, Red Finns on the Coteau and Rope of Time, and editor of new Saskatchewan writing called Sundog Highway.
His own culture shapes his personality, which he describes as “optimistic, superlative and overstated.
“I am very, very confident about myself,” said the former Beechy, Sask., schoolteacher and principal.
The father of 11 children, ages 10 to 26, easily switches from a relaxed presentation of unpublished young adult fiction with Grade 5 students to an animated reading of The Dithers with Slithers in a Grade 3 class.
Warwaruk has been writing since childhood, but never kept any of it until he was an adult. He received his masters in education from the University of Oregon, where he also nourished his literary side in a month-long writers’ workshop. After a 29-year career in education, the voracious reader found more time to write in retirement.
“I think I have something to offer young people. I tell them to look at their heritage,” he said.
That’s especially important now as rural areas empty out and “small little sustainable farms become a thing of the past.” He hopes his readings will trigger discussions around the supper table and revive family and community stories.
His own influences include writer Wallace Stegner, who gave prairie writers a legitimacy.
Warwaruk’s writing has allowed him to indulge in research about his family and his teacher-wife’s Finnish roots.
The rural culture crusader has advocated for the arts through involvement with school and community drama, the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the minister’s advisory committee on arts education.
The vast number of Europeans who settled the West created a “fragmentation of culture,” he said. Identities have faded through marriage between cultures, assimilation and especially American television, leading to an “aimlessness of a culture.” Indians are pushing their own cultural identification, he said, noting other cultures are slowly following their lead.
Warwaruk has a long road of work ahead of him as writer-in-residence, and he conceded it is already both challenging and demanding.
“You’d have to be half nuts to do it, but I think I am half nuts.”
Admittedly, there are few creative juices left after a full day of readings in the schools and writers’ workshops.
That’s why he relies on a morning diet of writing at home to help him finish the young adult novel he was commissioned to do about a Ukrainian’s reliance on a Métis man in the new land.
Most weeks, Warwaruk commutes between his work in Quill Plains and his acreage at Outlook, Sask. This summer he will take a hiatus from the one-year position to continue his work as crop adjuster.
“I saw it as a way to get close to farm connections, characters, landscapes and back roads,” he said, laughing that some of his clients may well end up as characters in his book.
He receives $24,000 for the writer-in-residence job, plus a mileage allowance for travel within the region, which takes an hour to drive from end to end.
The program is administered by the Saskatchewan Arts Board and funded through Saskatchewan Lotteries. It was established to provide artistic leadership and stimulate literary pursuits in regions outside the cities.
Freelance writer Joan Eyolfson Cadham, who is part of the committee overseeing the local program, said it raises the profile of writing as an art form and a career in rural Sask-atchewan.
“We want to encourage kids to grow up in Foam Lake and be a writer,” she said.
The program is a first because it allows writers to come to the schools rather than base them in one place. It will be closely monitored to see if it can work in other arts programs. A month into the program, Cadham said Warwaruk is in great demand.
“He’s a perfect fit for the community. He comes across as a perfectly ordinary guy. He’s comfortable with us and we are comfortable with him.”
