Growing Up in Nobel Literature Award winner Alice Munro’s hometown

We love to focus on unique Canadian content here at CanadianMomEh.com. Especially those stories that celebrate the awesomeness of Canadian women. This week, our very own Alice Munro was the first Canadian woman ever to win the Nobel Literature Award. We’re proud to present you with our guest writer, Christa Amyot (nee Crawford) who happened to be born in Alice Munro’s hometown. Only, she didn’t know it. This is her story.

By Christa Amyot

This week, Canadians fell in love all over again with their beloved Alice Munro, who, at the age of 82, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature as “master of the contemporary short story.” Alice Munro was a household name as I was growing up in Wingham, Ontario – the birthplace and rural inspiration for a large portion of her works. I’d grown up hearing stories of how the townsfolk, including my own grandmother, a close neighbour to Alice, had reacted unfavourably to her early works. Even so, it took a trip to Japan and another decade before I’d pick up one of her books.

“WHAT? You grew up in Wingham?” was the last response I expected to garner from my roommate, a stranger, going to the opposite end of Japan from me the next day to teach English on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme.  I’d been frantically reciting my “self-introduction” in Japanese and was baffled at her excitement over learning where I was from.

People from Wingham rarely say they are from Wingham. There’s an intricate code that we rely on that goes something like this:

If you’re from Huron County, I’m from Wingham.

If you’re from South Western Ontario, I’m from London.

If you’re from anywhere else in the world, I’m from Toronto.

But since the Mayor of Wingham had graciously given me a flag to present to the Mayor of my new host town, I was determined to memorize a quick blurb about my hometown and had come up with a clever geographic comparison. Sadly, the only remotely interesting thing I could think of to say about Wingham was that it was 53 times smaller than Yasuda despite boasting the same population of 3,000 people.

As it turns out, my roommate for the week had just completed her Master’s Thesis in the UK on Alice Munro’s collective works and she was beyond excited about meeting a real live Winghamite! Relieved at the opportunity to jump back into full speed English, I fed her gems of insight like the fact that our postal code N0G 2W0 can be remembered as “No One Goes 2 Wingham Ontario” as a lead up to the fact that I’d met Alice Munro.

The jewel of my crown of Munro stories was the part about when the Wingham United Church Women hosted a retirement tea for English teacher and had invited former student Alice Munro to attend. I was about 8 or 9 at the time, and had done a really good job at cheerfully passing around the polished silver trays of tiny egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I left out no detail, assuming that Ms. Master’s Degree would be impressed.

She clearly wasn’t, and with horror I realized that she had hoped to discuss some of Alice Munro’s books.

*crickets chirping*

“Alice Munro is not on the reading list at her Alma Mater in Wingham”

Books? I hadn’t read any of Alice Munro’s books nor had I imagined that many others had.  After all, she wasn’t on the reading list at F.E. Madill Secondary School in Wingham (nor is she today) despite the fact that she’d already won two Governor General’s Awards. Sadly, I had not been encouraged to read Alice Munro’s work, much less seek a signed copy or pose for a photograph when the opportunity presented itself.

My roommate was shocked at my ignorance (which I fully own up to) and I shudder to think what she wrote to her colleagues in the UK about this block-head who hadn’t even bothered to pick up a Munro book despite growing up in the same hometown.

Since that fateful day in 1996, two pertinent things have happened in relation to my story (three, if you count the fact that I made it through the flag presentation relatively unscathed). I have read a few of Alice Munro’s books and she has been named a Nobel Laureate.

“The Nobel Prize has me reflecting on the strange way we often see, or fail to see, the talents of those within our own immediate circles and neighbourhoods.”

The excitement around Canada’s first book to win the Nobel Prize since its inception in 1901 has me reflecting on the strange way we often see, or fail to see, the talents of those within our own immediate circles and neighbourhoods. I’m sad that, as a teenager, I didn’t tap into my own pre-existing schema surrounding Ms. Munro and investigate for myself whether or not she really was writing about the times and people in my Grandmother’s neighbourhood. Surely I would have “bought into” her books more than the other contemporary authors which I struggled to read at the time.

Beyond Ms. Munro and her incredible accomplishment as Canada’s first women to bring Mr. Nobel home for dinner, I wonder if there any other local talents that I have overlooked simply because of their geographic proximity? Are we teaching our children to value the talented Canadians we come into contact with and in doing so, inspire our children to follow their own dreams? I admire Alice Munro’s fortitude in remaining true to her voice, her past, her story & her style even when she did not receive instant support from her community and I am more inspired than ever to promote my own projects at the grassroots level.  Thank you, Ms. Munro.

Interestingly, Alice Munro has always maintained that she is “from Wingham” despite the aforementioned code and the fact that the town has only in recent years added a museum exhibit and Literary Garden in her honour. It will be interesting to see how Wingham embraces its re-recognized celebrity author and whether or not Ms. Munro might make an appearance at the upcoming Wingham Homecoming celebrations in August, 2014. Time will tell.

This week’s announcement of Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize for Literature has sparked a flurry of Wingham posts and I’m not the only one sharing my own “Munro Moments”. One article reported that book sellers have been caught off guard and are scrambling to stock their shelves and I can’t help but wonder how many of my former classmates will be (like me) at the front of the line? When the cashier asks for my postal code, I think I’ll give N0G 2W0!

 

Christa Amyot (nee Crawford – for the Winghamites reading!) resides in Rockland, Ontario with her husband and two children. She left her career as a teacher trainer when she figured out that it was costing her $47,000/yr to work outside the home and shares her Save-at-Home-Mom story on the Christa Clips blog.