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Canadian author Gabrielle Roy wrote Children of my Heart about her years as a young schoolteacher in 1930s southern Manitoba. As a collection of short, unrelated stories it offers brief glimpses of life in rural prairie communities. Roy is young and inexperienced, and the immigrant children she teaches are equally unsure about their place in the classroom. Through the eyes of a schoolteacher she shares what she learns about them and the struggles they face.
My instinct would describe this book as a depiction of life in poor immigrant communities throughout western Canada. Children of my Heart often comes up in conversations on poverty, and none of the characters would be described as “well off” by our standards. Another book club participant quickly pointed out, however, that these communities likely didn’t view themselves as “poor”. If everyone in the community was living this way, their poverty was the norm. We asked ourselves what might set apart social groups in this setting. While their socioeconomic status put them all at the same level, the community was instead divided by ethnic groups and families. They also looked down on families who didn’t ask for help from their neighbours and thereby isolated themselves; the man who is too busy to drive his son to school through winter snows and too proud to ask his neighbour for a ride is viewed with less respect than the friends who share in both work and celebration.
Our conversation turned naturally towards education, as Children of my Heart takes place mostly in schoolrooms. These were often one-room schoolhouses, or classrooms with several grade levels. We realized that, while education today often caters to the weakest students, the classrooms we visited with Gabrielle Roy were designed for academic achievers. Weak students fell through the gaps; if they couldn’t keep up there was no time or specialized curriculum to help them out. We had different opinions on which system would be more helpful. In an isolated, depression-era community only the strong would be able to survive, so it might be appropriate that the schools in this book encouraged “survival of the fittest”. However, this harsh environment would never provide students with “survival training”, leaving more vulnerable members of the classroom without a lifeline.
We repeatedly came back to the same complaint: we wanted to know more. The narrator introduces us to a world of fascinating characters, but we meet them briefly and then move on to another community and another classroom. We rarely follow the pupils outside the schoolyard; brief visits to dinner tables and chicken coops are thrilling, and we would love to know what’s going on in the lives of André, Vincenzo and Clare after they wipe off their slates and pack up their lunch pails. Our knowledge of the narrator is also limited. We see her as a schoolteacher, but surely she does other interesting things with her life in the evenings. What kind of food was she eating in boarding houses run by immigrant women? Was there any kind of social life in isolated prairie communities? If there were a sequel that would fill us in on the rest of these details, we would read it in an instant.
The last story in this collection has raised eyebrows in the past, and it didn’t disappoint in our group. The author recounts a troublesome student, 16-year-old Médéric, who finally devotes himself to his studies under her encouragement. As they spend more time together a new relationship flourishes; the exact nature of this relationship is debatable, and the narrator’s caginess reveals that perhaps she is unwilling to admit feelings even to herself. We realized, however, that we only questioned the appropriateness of this relationship because of the characters roles as teacher and student. At 16 and approximately 19, their story is otherwise a typically naïve coming of age. Perhaps one reason this story stands out for us in the collection is because it is by far the longest and the most in-depth: this is where we get more than a passing glimpse into their lives, and we finally spend more time with the characters we’ve been waiting to get to know.
Children of my Heart is a great read for a cold winter night. Wrap yourself up in a blanket, pour a cup of tea, and settle in for a good story.
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Sunday, 05 February 2012 
