Dust-Ship Glory
Dust-Ship Glory
The economic depression of the 1930s coincided with severe drought and crop failures in the prairie provinces. Saskatchewan was one of the areas hardest hit by the “Dirty Thirties.”
Many families lost everything. It was not uncommon to travel past abandoned farms with fence posts and farm equipment half-buried in dust--that which the bank had not already seized. Some dried-out farmers gave up and moved north, or to British Columbia. Those who stayed contended with the ongoing drought, dust storms, crop rust, and swarms of grasshoppers….
There was also more cooperation amongst the farmers of the 30s, as everyone had to pull together to survive. Relief trains would frequently arrive from Ontario, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia stacked high with food and household items such as apples, clothing, and salted cod and herring, which would last through the summer.
In 1931, a Finnish immigrant named Tom Sukanen began constructing a large ship in the middle of the dusty Saskatchewan prairie-raising quite a few eyebrows in the process.
The vast western prairies are a land of myths and legends. But Saskatchewan is real, the Great Depression was real, Tom Sukanen was real, and this legend is true.
Saskatchewan-raised Elaine M. Will’s graphic novel, adopted from Andreas Schroeder’s book on the life and times of Saskatchewan farmer and boat-builder Tom Sukanen, is a fitting testament to the hard life Sukanen, and all the other prairie settler farmers, endured during the tough times of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The depression-era life drove some to abandon their farms and seek a new start elsewhere in Canada or to return to their old homeland, some to suicide and some to madness. Remarkably, however, some were able to stick it out till better times arrived.
Tom Sukanen was a Finnish immigrant who first settled in the United States and later came to Canada after facing family and legal problems. He was a difficult man to like, and many of his small-town neighbours found him very peculiar, if not dangerous and unstable. Others looked at him more sympathetically and tried to charitably help him out, but to no avail. Tom fell victim to an obsessive dream: to build a boat in land-locked Saskatchewan, transport it to the Saskatchewan River, sail to Hudson Bay and eventually home to Finland. Eventually his fixation led to social ostracization, mental breakdown and an eventual involuntary commitment to Saskatchewan mental institution where he eventually died.
Will’s stark black and white, pen and ink illustrations capture both the bleakness of the Saskatchewan landscape and personalities of the characters readers meet in the story. However, there are issues with the time-shifting in the first part of the novel, which will confuse some readers as it is not clear where readers are in the course of Tom’s life. As well, the length of the novel is off-putting as excessive illustrations may distract readers from the dramatic flow.
Tom’s ship can be seen today at Moose Jaw’s Pioneer Village Museum. There is an excellent short film on Tom’s life, Sisu: The Death of Tom Sukanen (2009) and several You-tube videos which can be used to complement Will’s graphic novel.
A retired teacher, Ian Stewart lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.