Apologia - Final

When Canadian Literature is talked about, the topics of nature and frontier life are brought up. They are then broken down into further detail such as the setting (urban vs. rural), and whether or not there is an underdog hero. Children of My Heart, by Gabrielle Roy, uses the characteristics of Canadian Literature to create great novel, and is worthy of its great reviews. While fulfilling these characteristics Roy makes you fall in love with the characters and fall in love with Canada.

Throughout the story we follow a young teacher as she is assigned to different schools as her teaching abilities progress. The few schools she teaches at have a wide age and grade range. This represents the "constant challenge to expand a foothold" (spirit) throughout the large expanse that is Canada. This is very important in the representation of the frontier life in Canada. When she is teaching children of many ages and grades in one class, this means they are in an unpopulated area. This shows that Canada is in the early stages of its expansion. As they are in an unpopulated area, the children and their family's are spread out over a large area. The children have to travel over two miles to arrive at school. At a young age these children are forced to face the challenges and difficulties of the Canadian climate.

Without the harshness of the Canadian climate several key events of the story would not have taken place. In part two, one child has a particularly long journey to school and the student drops out of school due to the limited sunlight and harsheness of winter. As there is so little sunlight, he does not have enough time to do the chores in the evening after school. Another event that takes place during a winter seasnon is when the young teacher goes to a Mederic's house for dinner. When the time comes for Mederic to drive her home, there is a blizzard. The blizzard is so terrible that they lose track of the road and get lost "in the blinding snow" (Roy), making the return journey much longer than necessary. During the journey the teacher is forced to make their relationship clear after Mederic expresses his true feelings for the teacher. He is left heartbroken. After he recovers from the initial shock, he tries to make the remainder of the journey home as fun as possible to redeem his mistake.

When Mederic puts forth the effort to recover his mistake, this shows one of the patterns found in Canadian literature. The pattern is when a character "turns failure into a form of grace" (Historica). Children of My Heart is a perfect novel to show the patternes as it uses variety of them. Another pattern it uses is when a "person leaves their homeland, [and] adjusts to the new world" (Historica). This is perfectly describes the students in part one. The majority of the students are immigrants for a several different countries. They adapt to the methods of the Canadian teaching style and the Canadian climate. Another example Roy uses is "people arrive in their new home only to find that they are excluded from power" (Historica). This is best shown in section two with Pasquier family. This family had immigrated to Canada and had difficulty getting enough money. They often were forced to send the father away for his job to earn money.

Toronto star states "Children of My Heart" is a slim book, elegiac and graceful, but so filled with homely wisdom that overflows its pages". Through Roy's use of the various traits and characteristics of Canadian Literature, she created an outstanding novel. It is well worthy of the classification of classic Canadian novel.